A Song for Alingon
by mei0023
Summary: After years of working together, Shepard and Garrus can speak volumes to each other without ever saying a word. But when Shepard accepts an impossible mission on a dangerous planet, all bets are off. Rating subject to change in later chapters.
1. Prologue

_First and foremost: Many thanks to my beta (and gamma, delta, ad nauseum) reader, Sapidus, for being patient, generous, keen-eyed and quick-minded. I also owe an enormous debt to Link for tolerating my neuroses with unflappable grace, and always keeping the coffee on._

_Second (and secondmost): Lyrics are "Flowers of the Forest," Scottish, ca 1765._

_Third (and finally): Please R&R!_

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As Commander Shepard's vision swam back into focus, the first thing she saw was... nothing.

_Blind. _The thought, simple and elegant and terrifying, ripped through her mind and tore her from her daze. She shot forward, hands scrabbling across the ground in front of her.

She flexed her fingers against the floor. _Tile._ Normandy tile. Her shower.

_Not blind. Steam._

_Fuck._

Heart slowing, she leaned back against the shower wall and sighed tiredly. The steam teased down into her lungs with each breath, settling heavily and sparking a fit of coughs. Visible even under the flushed scarlet of her skin, a patchwork of bruises started at her feet, wound up over her legs and disappeared out of sight on the upper reaches of her torso. Her knees, she noted with a distant irritation, were still twitching with spent adrenaline as they stood curled in front of her.

Shepard's pruned fingers brushed her face gently. She could feel the congealed remnants of unwashed cleanser behind her ears. Biting back a sigh, she rubbed the area vigorously and shook her head.

The water coalesced into rivulets down her back as she hauled herself carefully to her feet, pressing against waves of vertigo. One hand against the wall for support, she bowed her head under the spray and tried to pick sense from the jumble of her own memories. Images came back to her piecemeal: the light of rage in the Illusive Man's eyes when she told Joker to drop his signal; the Normandy swarming with the precision chaos of a battle frigate in retreat; bruised and bloodied crew members rushing between stations with untreated injuries. Chambers--Chambers!--barking orders at the crew to clear the way, one hand on Shepard's elbow. Kelly had completely ignored Shepard's orders to attend to the others first, making the commander wonder briefly just how bad she had to look to drive the normally deferential yeoman to insubordination. The thought had been cut short as she found herself dragged into the elevator, a steely-eyed Chambers standing silently beside her.

Frustrated, Shepard had tried irritably to dislodge her elbow from Chambers' grip, but her arm only jiggled pathetically in response. She barely noticed as Chambers led her from the elevator. Exhaustion or no, Shepard was sure that a rookie yeoman--even one as stubborn as Chambers--shouldn't have been able to restrain a former Spectre with nothing but a hand to the elbow. Her military training kicked in, and she began to objectively map the aches in her body; there was a dull throbbing in her right shoulder, and she noticed that she was correcting for a slight weakness in her right leg, but otherwise...

_Shit_.

The wave of adrenaline receded without warning, strength ebbing from every limb and uncharted pains rising in its place. Shepard's knees gave a violent shake as she pushed forward. The pain in her shoulder, previously a small ember of intense discomfort, flared outwards and down her chest and arm. Every step sent a shockwave through her ribs. And Christ, her ankle...

Preoccupied with taking inventory of her injuries, she noticed the weakness in her ankle a beat too late. She fell like a stone.

From nowhere, a hand snatched at her good shoulder, catching her mid-fall and dragging her to her feet. In the same instant, Chambers snatched at her right elbow, wrenching it in the attempt and causing blazes of pain to shoot out from the wound in her shoulder. Shepard collapsed into a cascade of profanity spanning several languages even as her arms were hoisted around two pairs of shoulders for stability.

When the pain receded enough for her eyes to refocus, she found herself staring at the ceiling of the medical bay. Chakwas was hovering over her with a pen light.

"Commander." The doctor's voice sounded garbled, as if Shepard's ears were underwater.

"Stay with me, Commander." She squinted at the light. Sounds began to resolve into words--"bullet," "stubborn," "bleeding"--though she couldn't immediately identify the voices behind them. Shepard blinked the spots from her eyes as the ceiling tiles sharpened into focus.

She groaned slightly, but immediately regretted it as Chakwas, looking for all the world like an angry mother about to lay into her misbehaving child, appeared at the edge of her vision. She tried to roll her head to face the doctor, but pulled back with a curse as her neck sang with pain.

"Hold still. You've lost a good amount of blood." She could hear the irritation ramping up in Chakwas' voice. "You scared the soul out of poor Yeoman Chambers."

Shepard gave a tentative flex of her left hand. Pleasantly surprised to find it functioning, she raised it to her throbbing temples. "What?"

Chakwas appeared again at the edge of Shepard's vision, holding up one gloved hand. A red-gray ooze--medigel mixed with a hefty portion of blood--coated her fingers. "You're covered in this from collar to hip. You took a slug to the shoulder."

Shepard closed her eyes as her stomach gave a small turn. The sight of her own blood was by no means alien to her, but when combined with the rusted gray sludge it formed against the medigel... she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the rising cramp in her gut.

A familiar voice rumbled from beside her, just outside of her vision. "It's not all that bad, Shepard. Just looks like you ripped open a varren and took a bath in it."

Shepard nearly laughed with relief. _Garrus._ She tried unsuccessfully to tilt her head toward him, but only caught a glimpse of blue-gray dancing at the edge of her vision before the sound of armor latches unsnapping pulled her attention back into the moment.

Even without looking, Shepard could tell that Chakwas--and an assistant, though she forced herself not to speculate who--were moving down her side, swiftly stripping her to her weave undersuit. The residual adrenaline that had previously been confined to her twitching fingers instantly flooded her body in an irrational, instinctive panic. Pain temporarily forgotten, every nerve fired in a simultaneous flight reflex as her body screamed to grab on to her disappearing armor and take cover.

Blood pumped in her ears as she grappled for control of her own expression, acutely aware of the half-dozen or so bodies darting around the med bay. She found her last ounce of calm and gripped it tightly as the panic slowly melted into impotent embarrassment.

A pinching squeeze on her left shoulder brought her back around to herself. She swung her eyes to her left to find Garrus glaring down at her with the silent intensity of a mining laser. She recognized the expression--fringe flattened back, eyes dark, mandibles twitching--as one he reserved for calling out her more egregious bullshit. His talons had found their way between the remaining pieces of armor to dig into the weave underneath, clasping a touch harder than was necessary to restrain her. Shepard countered his glare with one of her own, though the result was lackluster at best, dampened by pain and the screaming humiliation of being stripped in front of her own crew.

She would have given anything at that moment to be anywhere other than on a table, naked aside from her skin-tight weave suit, Garrus hovering over her--she would kill the bastard if he smirked--and God knows who wrenching off the last of her waist armor. In a moment of cruel irony, she noticed that the pain in her neck had died down under the adrenaline rush, giving her a slightly improved view of the spectacle.

She searched Garrus' face with a glare of defiance, bracing for the inevitable flippant comment. It didn't come. His eyes were boring holes into her own, and, she noted with a degree of relief, not straying south. The small comfort did little to dampen the humiliation that roiled inside her, and Shepard's eyes trailed to Garrus' free arm, which hung limply at his side. She furrowed her brow. _When...?_

Images flooded back to her before she could push them from her mind.

_She heard him yell, saw his footing give way as the platform shifted; he fell out of sight. Instinct thrust her forward. She threw herself down the crumbling floor, kicking off a broken tile to catch up with him. His arm reached for her. The world went silent around her, columns collapsing mutely into dust in the periphery of her vision. Then, a tug that threatened to take her with him as talons found wrist, fingers found armor. There was a sharp jerk--her body skidded--his arm twisted. Sound slowly returned as he swung with spent momentum. A curse broke through the silence; Garrus. Alive. Relief, unspeakable in its intensity, flooded her as she saw him claw his way back over the edge of the platform.__  
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Then Chakwas was there, pushing him aside and snapping Shepard from her reverie. Garrus stepped back obediently, though Shepard imagined she saw a hint of reluctance dance across his features. Chakwas reached up and unfastened the last pieces of armor from Shepard's good shoulder and arm and prodded the elbow with an impatient finger.

"Flex," she ordered curtly. Shepard obeyed.

"Well, at least there's no nerve damage," Chakwas said, returning to the other side of the bed. "Wiggle your toes."

Shepard fought to keep the rising frustration out of her voice. "Doc--"

Another voice chimed in. "Do what she says, Commander. I know it's not your style, but just this once."

Shepard's stomach sunk. Jacob. Of the entire crew, it had to be _him._ He had been the one helping Chakwas pull armor from her prone body, leaving her in a skin-tight suit that left little to the imagination. Jacob was a professional, and Shepard had never caught him leering openly, but... she knew. The sheer awkwardness of the whole situation was almost too much for her to bear. She prayed that the occasion was solemn enough--and the room sufficiently full--to keep him from enjoying this scene on some weird level. She clamped her eyes shut against a rising shudder and wiggled her toes.

Chakwas, apparently satisfied, retrieved a canister of anaesthetic and moved to Shepard's side. Shepard was startled to see that the entire right shoulder and sleeve of her suit had been removed while she was busy trying to stare a hold in Garrus' head.

"Alright, this is going to sting for a minute." The Doctor unwrapped one end of the tube and shook it. "Though somehow I think you've had worse."

The attempt at humor, however well-intentioned, only served to reignite Shepard's exhaustion-fueled indignation. She knew better than to try and talk Chakwas down, but she wasn't _entirely_ helpless. In what she knew was an ultimately pointless gesture of defiance--or spite, she could really go for either--she held up her good hand in the universal sign of refusal. "Save it for somebody who needs it, Doc."

The doctor, now visibly exasperated, opened her mouth to reply when Zaeed appeared silently at Shepard's side. She was surprised to see that he looked even shittier than the others; she had ordered him to escort the crew back to the ship, and he'd apparently had a hell of a time of it. Without a word, he raised a bottle into Shepard's line of vision, shaking it once for emphasis: whiskey, and mostly full.

Shepard's heart leapt with gratitude. She longed to snatch it from him and down the whole handle, but could only manage to lift her bad arm a few inches before Zaeed placed the bottle in her hand, adding his own grip for support.

Chakwas looked at Zaeed, somewhat surprised by his appearance. "As the Commander said, you should save that for someone who needs it." Shepard noticed the smile touching the corner of the doctor's eyes, despite her attempt to sound stern.

"Do you see anyone else who needs this right now?" Zaeed responded with a small shrug. "General anaesthetic. Plus, it'll knock you on your ass long enough to let the doc work in peace," he added to Shepard.

Shepard looked at him with what she hoped was obvious thanks and, with help, raised the bottle to her lips. She took a deep, long daught--more of a chug, really--followed by another. By the time she lowered the bottle, a quarter of the whiskey was gone. A shallow sigh escaped her chest as the room began, inch by inch, to shift comfortably out of focus.

"Done so soon?" The smile wormed its way into Chakwas' voice as she leaned over and began cleaning the bullet hole.

Shepard looked at Zaeed and smirked--or at least tried. She wasn't _entirely_ sure what her face was doing. "What happened to using rage as an anesthetic?'"

"Booze is more convenient," Zaeed replied, a small smirk working its way onto his face. "And you don't look nearly pissed off enough not to feel--"

Chakwas wrenched the slug from her shoulder. Shepard choked back a scream as she felt the ragged metal tear from her, her right side exploding in a flash of pain. She reflexively shot forward, only to meet a flurry of hands pushing her back down.

"--that," Zaeed finished. Shepard fought to bring her breathing back under control as the world spun around her. She looked down at her right arm, where Zaeed's hand was pinning her wrist to the table. Her knuckles were whitened around the neck of the bottle, arm straining to wrench it toward her already-beaten chest. Lucidity grappled for a foothold in the back of her mind. A bottle that size, with a spasm that strong, could have cracked another rib. _That... _She breathed deeply. _That could have been bad. _

Zaeed released her wrist--leaving the whiskey, she noticed gratefully--as her muscles finally uncoiled against the table. Jacob was standing next to Chakwas, his hand holding down the wounded shoulder. He smirked at her silently, though his attempt at nonchalance was ruined by burn marks in his armor, the swelling around his right eye, and Shepard's lingering horror.

Shepard closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The cold air dragged the lingering taste of whiskey down into her throat. The persistent, instinctive urge to flee the scene had faded slightly, only to be replaced by an intense but resigned embarrassment. Garrus' hand on her shoulder served as a firm--and secretly welcome--reminder of the futility of mounting an escape attempt. In her current state, any fight would be over long before it even began... and just this once, she was secretly thankful to be absolved of having to make a decision.

Besides, she thought as the room swam slightly before her, his hand was warm, and oddly comforting where it pressed against the dip of her collarbone. She was missing several pints of blood, a few cubic inches of flesh and bone, and likely half her mind, but she somehow felt more comfortable and secure than she had in a while.

She peered, feeling slightly lopsided, at the whiskey. She'd have to ask Zaeed where he got the stuff.

"Are we done, Doctor?" she asked, trying, through the haze of alcohol and pain, to sound irritated.

"Not by a mile," Chakwas answered. "But since I know you won't stay down here without restraints--and I don't think Officer Vakarian is willing to stand there all night--" she felt Garrus press down in warning--"I'm willing to give you the quick fix and send you to your quarters. Under supervision, of course."

A curse flew under Shepard's breath as Chakwas held up the monitor pack, encased in clear virgin plastic. It was smaller than a printed magazine, moderately flexible and only about as thick as a datapad. Shepard was painfully well-acquainted with the things, having suffered more than her share of injuries, and normally she tolerated the annoying stiffness they created between her shoulder blades without complaint.

But this one, she realized with a sinking feeling, interfaced with EDI. She had no personal beef with the AI; Joker had warmed up to her help, and Shepard found herself minding her presence less and less--but that tolerance certainly did _not_ extend to interfacing her own body, nanotech and all, with the AI's network.

After a few minutes of Chakwas' continued prodding--and half of the remaining whiskey--Shepard managed to haul herself over to a chair in the corner of the med bay, under Chakwas' order to sit still and wait while she attended to the more critical cases. Once she had resigned herself to being stuck in nothing but her weave suit, Shepard found the journey almost tolerable. Time ebbed and flowed oddly as the whiskey took hold, and she found herself forcing her eyes open in a fight against her growing exhaustion as Chakwas flitted among the crew members who wandered in and out.

After a few minutes, Chakwas reappeared with the monitor. She pulled a screen around the corner and had Shepard sit on a stool facing the wall as she began to unzip the back of her suit. The wet, sucking sound as her suit pulled free from the medigel layer against her skin was no less disgusting for being familiar. Shepard swallowed the flood of sarcastic comments that rose in her mind. Most of them were in poor taste anyway.

Moments passed in silence as Chakwas gently wiped Shepard's skin clean, before turning to the burns that streaked across her back. The raw skin stung and turned cold where the rubbing alcohol evaporated, causing Shepard to shiver slightly.

"You seem unsatisfied with your treatment," Chakwas said dryly, her low volume barely masking the edge of concern.

Shepard looked at the wall, her blood pressure rising a point. "I don't like being stripped to my skivvies in front of my own crew."

Chakwas snorted lightly. "Surely you've had to field-dress a wound before."

"This is... different." Shepard felt the doctor's hand slip slightly at the pause. She ignored it. "These people are counting on me. I'm not some N7 rookie, and they're not my classmates."

Chakwas seemed to consider that. "I won't apologize for doing my duty as a physician." The sound of ripping plastic hit Shepard's ears as Chakwas unwrapped the monitor. "But I will say that I was unaware of how personal this issue was for you. And I promise that I will exercise all due diligence in clearing out any unwelcome guests if the need to 'strip you to your skivvies' ever arises again."

Shepard turned her head slightly. She thought that she'd heard a smirk at the word "personal"--but maybe she was imagining it.

The warm, sticky sensation of medical adhesive spread over her back, followed by a firm pressure as Chakwas applied the monitor. After a few moments of fiddling, it hummed quietly to life.

Chakwas ran her hand over it once again and gently pressed a few buttons. "I know you're not a fan of these, but it is a necessary precautionary measure. Joker's been wearing one since he arrived, believe it or not."

Shepard blinked. "Wait, Joker? The same Joker who smeared grease on EDI's camera lenses?"

"Don't be so surprised." Chakwas checked the adhesive around the monitor's edges and turned Shepard around to examine the front of her torso. "It's encrypted so that it can only be read by the medical systems and EDI's communication subprograms. And it's a one-way transmission; I can't do anything from here, and neither can she. Except maybe talk about it."

The two fell into silence. Behind the screen, their voices low, Shepard didn't mind the examination. Chakwas' tone, the way her hands moved swiftly and with purpose, reminded Shepard of the nuns that had been so omnipresent in the slums back home. She had lost track of the number of visits she and her gang had made to the women, bearing with them every kind of problem from broken bones to desperate pleas for sanctuary. They were always taken in, and salves and admonitions were delivered in equal measure. Only as Shepard grew did she realize how hawkishly the women had watched over the ragged bands of children who roamed like small merc gangs through the back alleys and sewer tunnels. The alley behind the church, ironically, was one of the favored places for scrapping; nobody died there. Every time things got dangerous, every time a kid had been in danger of losing more than just his dignity, the nuns had thrown open their doors and rushed to the scene.

Shepard thought that Chakwas would have made a good nun.

After applying the last of the bandages, Chakwas turned her around and zipped up the back of her suit. Shepard rolled her good shoulder slowly, feeling the monitor's edge bite against the soft inside of her shoulder blade. With only one good arm she wasn't going to be able to do much about the discomfort.

Distracted by her self-examination, Shepard barely noticed the sound of rustling fabric until Chakwas' jacket was draped across her shoulders. Her head snapped up to the doctor, who was leaning over her in just a tee-shirt and pants, adjusting the neck around Shepard's chest.

Her voice was warm, and slightly embarrassed. "It's not much, but it should provide some modesty until you reach your quarters," she said. Shepard felt her face melt into a tired, and unspeakably grateful, smile.

"Thanks, Doc." Chakwas merely smiled back at her and slipped back through the curtain.

No sooner had Shepard put her feet on the floor than Chambers was suddenly at her side--she secretly wondered where the woman had been hiding--helping her out of the med bay, into the elevator, and into her quarters.

Where, she remembered with a grouse, she had promptly fallen asleep in the shower.

Resting her forehead against the cold tile, Shepard gently fingered the bandages on her torso. Gauze mapped the thermal burns and near-misses she'd taken in the fight, but the wounds themselves were eclipsed by the dull ache that groaned through every inch of her body.

She turned the water off and sighed. The swimming in her head was making standing more unpleasant by the second, and her limited mobility would have made any serious attempt to wash herself a painful exercise in futility. Too tired to try, she dragged herself from the shower, half-heartedly ran a towel over her head, and struggled into loose combat pants and a tee-shirt.

The monitor, the presence of which she had been able to ignore up until now, pinched her skin insistently as she settled the shirt over her shoulders. In a moment of exhausted anger, Shepard flung her good arm over her shoulder, grabbed the monitor through the shirt, and pulled. It broke free from her skin with a loud rip before clattering to the floor. Shepard cursed as her reddened skin recoiled at contact with the shirt.

EDI flickered to life by the door. "Commander Shepard, I advise against tampering with medical equipment."

Shepard glared sideways at the avatar, though she wasn't sure how well the AI could interpret body language. "Fuck off, EDI. I've had a long day."

The AI paused, and Shepard realized that her voice had come out much hoarser than she'd expected. She really didn't sound good.

"Please rest, Commander."

Shepard shook her head. Her eyes trailed slowly over to her terminal, which blinked with unread messages. She felt her stomach sink. "EDI, how many messages do I have?"

"Seventeen, Commander," the AI responded automatically. "But I advise that you rest first, and respond once you are fit for duty."

Shepard slowly lowered herself into her chair and turned to face her terminal. "Dismissed, EDI." She thought she saw the AI linger for a moment before obediently vanishing.

Shepard attempted to scan her messages. The characters floated in the air before her, rearranging themselves into garbled nonsense. She rubbed her eyes; they were a few hours out from Omega, with days' worth of preparations still left. No time for sleep. Not now.

--

In the grand hierarchy of Garrus Vakarian's shit-list, being kept waiting was a generally low-ranking annoyance, stuck somewhere between bars with loud music and having to do his own laundry. But when combined with an intractable AI (much higher on the list) and the possibility of facing an impossibly mulish Shepard (somewhere near the top), the end result was fast-tracked straight to the top ten slot. EDI wasn't doing herself any favors by giving him time to mentally shuffle the order of things, either.

Most of the other things on that list, though, were at least corporeal, and could appreciate the finer points of a pointed gun. Unarmed (and not entirely clear on whether EDI could experience pain) he was relegated to glaring at the lock on the door as if he could override the access code by sheer force of will. Eventually EDI would have to give in. If she held out, well, he was sure a well-placed word with Joker and a few swapped wires would ease the negotiation.

He growled in irritation. "Will you just let me in?"

He wasn't sure if he was projecting, or if EDI actually sounded smug. "Doctor Chakwas left strict orders that the Commander was not to be disturbed." There was a small pause, as if the AI was considering how best to phrase what it said next. "And the Commander has been... agitated."

Garrus registered the unusual pause with more than a small degree of concern, but channeled his irritation into his voice. "And I have to return the armor that was--rather unceremoniously, might I add--taken from her in the med bay. That way, she'll be properly geared to throw herself into a new disaster tomorrow." _That_, he admitted inwardly, _and to make sure she hasn't fallen asleep at her damn desk_. "Think of it as preventative medicine."

He noted the ship's silence with satisfaction before the doors slid back. "Very well. However, please be sure to minimize the duration of your visit. Commander Shepard needs to rest."

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled, and stepped inside. Once in, he unceremoniously dumped the pile of Shepard's armor onto EDI's holomap, causing EDI's avatar to flicker and vanish. Satisfied that he had at least banished any visible reminder of its omnipresence, he turned to face the rest of the room.

The Turian version of a grimace crossed his face. She was asleep at her desk.

Part of him--the part that wasn't bogged down by painkillers, exhaustion, and the persistent ache in his freshly relocated shoulder--was tempted to quietly set the image before him as the new network desktop background. Her body was splayed out at an impossible angle, her roller chair pushed back in a maneuver that he was sure would add a back cramp to her existing problems. Jumbled characters trailed across the terminal screen from where her hand had landed on the keypad. A cup of coffee--cold, he noted upon inspection--sat amid the splashed results of near-misses with the pot. Her head was nestled against the crook of her good arm, face turned to the opposite wall, and he wondered almost idly if she was drooling. To cap it all off, she looked like she was dressed for basic training.

The momentary amusement faded, frustration slowly boiling to the surface in its place as he unconsciously balled his talons into fists. He would follow her--_had_ followed her--into certain death and back again. She was a force of nature that blew through obstacles with a kind of focused intensity that he'd never seen in any other soldier, human or Turian. It was hardly surprising that people trailed after her starry-eyed even when she threatened to put a bullet in them.

But in her eternal, almost effortless focus, she had one glaring blind spot: herself. No matter how far the universe and fate bent to keep her alive, she never thought of herself as an integral part of her mission. She was cannon fodder for her own objectives, and it drove the rest of the crew--or at least the ones who knew her well enough to see her own recklessness for what it was--absolutely mad. Those moments when her blatant disregard for her own life threatened to topple the entire mission were enough to make his fringe stand on end.

Savior of the citadel, nightmare of the Collectors, avatar for the hopes of the human race... And here she was, passed out over an endless stream of minutiae because she refused to stop long enough to move ten feet to her own bed. Garrus thought he might have admired her focus if it didn't piss him off so badly.

For a moment, he considered leaving her in place. It was only _partially_ out of personal spite toward Shepard for letting herself reach such a sorry state, though he couldn't deny the clench of anger he felt looking at her. Standing with her in the med bay, he had been a captive audience to one of the most unsettling displays of discomfort he'd ever witnessed. Chakwas and Jacob--the thought made even the Turian cringe a bit--hadn't seen the subtle spectacle that played across her expression as they peeled plate after plate of armor off her beaten body. The sight of her laying there, staring at the ceiling hard enough to burn a hole in it, was something he wished he could forget. He had seen corpses in better shape. The years under her command had taught him to distinguish her Commander Shepard mask from actual calm, and the sound of those snaps had sent the mask into a strained overdrive. Even through the carefully-structured passivity, each snap had caused a new wave of panic to wash along the undertones of her expression, playing silently along the corners of her eyes, the flares of her nostrils, the furrow of her brow. Humans were hardly subtle in their facial expressions, but Shepard was an iron mask. To most people she would have looked like a statue in shifting light, but he had caught every flicker of impotent rage. After that display, he wasn't eager to sneak up on her in any state where she might feel vulnerable.

He peered down at the commander, wondering how best to wake her without startling her, or aggravating anything already broken. Seeing no better way, he hesitantly reached a hand out to her shoulder--the good one--and touched her lightly.

Shepard shot up like a round from a hand cannon. Garrus snapped his arm back and fell into a defensive stance. Shepard's eyes darted wildly about the room before landing on him. Garrus bristled, flexing his talons; if she got a hold of him while in a panic, he would be in for another visit to Chakwas. After a tense moment, recognition slowly dawned in his commander's eyes. She stared at Garrus in silence; he responded in kind, keeping one eye on what he hoped was her unconsciously clenched fist.

Shepard's eyes drooped closed for less than a heartbeat before she snapped them open again. She arranged her face into the perfect picture of composure, her eyes studying Garrus' stance. "Garrus. What are you doing here?"

Garrus watched her warily. "I came to drop off your armor," he said with a small jerk of his head toward the pile. He noticed her hand relax; he wasn't sure she had known she was making a fist. "And to make sure you hadn't managed to break anything else between the door and bed."

Shepard blinked. She glanced over at her bed blankly, as if suddenly remembering she had one. She looked back at Garrus, then at the terminal in front of her. He wasn't sure if she had even registered his comment about her armor. "Thank you for the... concern. I just have to take care of a few things." She looked at the terminal, a bit longer this time, her eyes slipping into a thousand-mile stare. But when she turned back to Garrus, the familiar spark of life had returned. For just a moment, she looked just as she always did; alert, focused, with a laugh dancing somewhere at the edge of her expression. But it was only for a moment, and the spark flickered as she looked away. "Thanks, though." She turned her chair back toward the desk with an air of dismissal.

He didn't leave. Instead, he righted himself, folded his hands behind his back and stood at ease. A moment of silence followed, which he eventually broke.

"Well, don't let me keep you." His voice was deadpan, his stance the picture of military discipline.

Shepard didn't turn around, but he could see the irritation ripple up her back. If she was a Turian--and there were moments when he was startled by how close she came--her fringe would have been flaring. "I'm not a goddamn invalid, Vakarian."

"Never said you were, ma'am."

She turned, then, and Garrus saw her eyes flash at the honorific. He felt a tug of guilt at goading Shepard in her broken state, but he couldn't help himself. Toying with Shepard was like playing with fire; half the fun was in letting it flare as close to your skin as you could without retreating. He hadn't been burned yet, though part of him suspected it was only a matter of time.

He shook the thought from his head. Besides, he reminded himself, he'd be there if she didn't make it, just like before. _Harmless fun with the half-dead commander, that's all. _

Another moment of silence passed between them. Shepard's eyes were scanning his face, calculating just how far he was going to push her. Rising to the bait, Shepard slowly and deliberately pressed her left hand against the desktop and hauled herself upwards.

For a moment, Garrus thought she might actually make it. But for Shepard, "upwards" ended directly on her bad ankle, where it promptly reverted into "downwards." She staggered, clawing at the edge of the desk as she lost her balance. Garrus swooped in and righted her, one arm around her back.

He looked down at Shepard, who leaned heavily into his side. She was avoiding his gaze. Her body sagged with exhaustion, bravado abandoned, and Garrus felt a distant twinge of guilt. She had just been humiliated twice in front of her own crew, and it was now glaringly obvious that she couldn't make it more than a few feet under her own power. Even with his help, she would be tripping over herself before she could reach the stairs.

He paused, weighing his options. After a moment he held back a sigh, and, hoping she would recover quickly from a third embarrassment, moved. With a fluid gesture, and before Shepard could protest, Garrus bent down and scooped her up, one arm under her knees, the other across her back. He began to carry her across the room.

"Garrus..." she started, with what sounded like an attempt at a growl.

He ignored the wasted threat. He didn't blame her for being angry; she had been stripped, goaded, and now carried like an invalid by her own crew member. For the first time in recent memory, he almost regretted baiting her.

_Almost._ He knew she could take it; there was some comfort in the back-and-forth, the sarcasm and verbal sniping that had become so ingrained in their interactions. He would have been more worried if she had simply sit there and taken the ribbing gracefully.

"Now don't get too used to this," he said sardonically, depositing her on her bed. "I'm not in the business of being a personal shuttle. And frankly, I'm not bulletproof enough to carry you around."

A meager smirk formed at the corner of Shepard's mouth. He had to fight back one of his own as a small knot of worry, which he hadn't even noticed was there, unwound in his chest; at least her sense of humor was intact. It was a start.

He pulled a sheet loose from the edge of the bed and draped it over her. As he did so, he noticed her eyes drift shut and the tension fade from her shoulders as her body slowly melted into the mattress. He hated to admit it, but the effect was strangely satisfying. "Chakwas ordered EDI to keep you locked in here for the next twenty-four hours. You won't be welcome on the bridge in the meantime. In fact, I'm pretty sure Chambers has orders to shoot you on sight. Gardiner will bring your meals tomorrow, and Miranda is overseeing the preparations for docking." He was pretty sure she wasn't listening, but threw in the specifics to be safe. "Everything's in order. Get some sleep."

He stood and glanced once more around the room to make sure that everything was in place. She had been too tired to do much damage to her belongings, though he mentally noted to hit the fishtank's feeder button on his way out.

Shepard's voice floated up from behind him. "Hey, Garrus." It was barely audible, and coated with sleep.

He turned to look at her. "Yes, Commander?"

She peered from between her eyelids, ignoring the subtle jab as a smirk unfurled languidly across her face. "Sing me a lullaby?"

It was Garrus' turn to laugh. He grinned down at her. "Right, Shepard. Me singing." The thought of Shepard cringing under assault from a Turian chorus gave him an added kick. "Maybe someday when we've run out of material for these little matches of ours. Then, I'll just have to sing you to death."

But he wasn't sure Shepard even heard him; her eyes were closed, her body as still as a corpse under the sheets. She wasn't going to be up for a very, very long time.

* * *

_I've seen the smiling of fortune beguiling,  
I've tasted her pleasures, and felt her decay;  
Sweet is her blessing, and kind her caressing,  
But now they are fled, and fled far away.  
_(Scottish trad.)


	2. Annan Water, pt 1

_Primo: Grazi yet again to my alpha-and-omega reader, Sapidus, who was kind enough to invest insane amounts of time and effort yet again into making my writing legible. E molto grazie to Link, who gives me the confidence to punch the keys each and every day._

_A million thanks also to the readers who R&Red, fav'd, set my story on alert, and provided the much-needed support to finally finish this chapter. I apologize for the delay in getting this one out--you can blame Link for getting down on one knee and proposing to me on the day I was scheduled to write a second draft. (I accepted, natch.) On the upside, I am now a VERY happy author with a very big rock on one hand. Once we get through the early chaos of wedding planning (already dying down), cranking out this story will be a lot easier._

_Due: Closing lyrics are "Ой, да не вечер (Oh, it wasn't yet night)", Russian traditional. FF doesn't seem to like my link, but you can find it on YouTube with the suffix:_ /watch?v=X91yW6uajKo

_Due-point-five: It's likely obvious by now, but I've left Shepard as just that--Shepard. Not Jane Shepard, Generi-Shep, or Tara (my own), but just Shepard. Consider it a prompt to [insert your Shepard here]._

_Treze: As always, please R&R! __  
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_Seven hours after returning through the relay, an exhausted peace had settled over the Normandy. The wounded--including Shepard--were resting, leaving a skeleton crew to run the ship under Miranda's command. It was coming up on the end of the shift, and small clumps of crew were beginning to stir and drift exhaustedly toward their stations. Garrus and Tali were hunched over calibrations in the engineering deck, furiously debating the feasibility of a large-bore kinetic cannon under the aft hull, while Donnelly and Gabby kept a safe distance.

"For one thing, the compressors would never survive that kind of kickback," Tali protested. "And the rate of discharge from something that size would render the weapon guidance system we have useless. You'd need to lash together all of EDI's independent systems, and install tertiary heat sinks for the AI core alone."

Garrus seemed to consider that, though Tali knew he was most likely searching for a new angle to press the issue. They had been at this for hours, and it had quickly devolved into one of those roundabout discussions she'd grown to hate. Garrus would make a point, she would offer a counter-argument, and within minutes, Garrus would have navigated them back to their original starting point without Tali ever realizing.

Tali realized, abstractly, that the comfort she drew from such an irritating habit of Garrus' was weird. Each and every person on Shepard's combat team was stubborn in his own way, but the Turian raised subtle resistance to an art form. He had been that way two years ago, on the Normandy SR1, and Tali briefly wondered whether it was that fact alone that made their otherwise infuriating interactions almost... comforting_._

It had been a long and hard two years since the SR1, and when she had last seen him before parting ways after Shepard's death on Alchera, she had been in no state to offer comfort. She had been so consumed by shock that her own grief was little more than a distant blip on the horizon, something she was factually aware of but was too numbed to feel. Even after the survivors had been counted and the physical wounds treated, adrenaline had coursed through her veins, preventing her from slowing down enough to fully process what had just happened.

Liara's walls were the first to come crashing down. The asari had staggered off a short distance from the group, fallen to her knees, and slowly descended into loud sobs. Kaidan had walked off as well, and Wrex, likely to break things; and amid the dying bustle of a shipwrecked crew, Tali suddenly found herself alone.

Garrus, for his part, had taken up residence atop a nearby boulder with his back to the others. Tali hadn't noticed him take up the spot, but he held it in total silence and stillness. Still stunned and in desperate need of a familiar presence, Tali had walked to him and settled herself wordlessly on the ground beside his perch. His physical proximity, even in silence, was comforting. She and Garrus were always beside Shepard on her landing parties, and somehow it seemed natural that they should stay near one another now.

The two had stared silently at the horizon as the remaining crew huddled together to speak quietly, or wandered off to grieve in private. A mournful silence had descended over the wreckage by the time the Quarian had worked up enough courage to hazard a glance at him.

What she saw was enough to make her voice catch in her throat. Behind Garrus's eyes there had been a darkness that jarred the weight of shock from her shoulders, leaving her vulnerable to a sudden ambush of tears. There was shock there, yes, and grief, but what frightened Tali was the icy blackness behind them. She had seen the same look before, in the eyes of Quarians banished from the fleet. It was confusion, and desperation, and an aching wish for apathy and the comfort it promised; but beneath it smoldered a black rage that could utterly destroy a lesser being. Garrus's eyes were those of a man whose every breath was fueled by an anger without direction or meaning. It was a dangerous thing, for a being to be so enraged that only the universe itself could serve as the object of his hatred, and though Garrus hadn't reached that point when she saw him on Alchera, she had seen the beginnings.

She'd seen it before, and at the time, it was enough to make her eyes flood with repressed tears. Even now, remembering that look made her shudder.

She had seen it in Saren.

That Garrus was beside her now, toying with her in a way that had lost its pointlessly sadistic edge was more than a modicum of comfort. Even if he was slightly more pointed in his jabs than she remembered, it was a good sign that he had at least recovered somewhat. _Somehow._

Of course, in the short-term she was still left with a stubborn Turian for an engineering partner, and no amount of abstract comfort was going to make _that_ bearable. Tali acknowledged that she was thin-skinned--literally and metaphorically--but she couldn't for the life of her understand how the Commander put up with Garrus and his "moods." Granted, Shepard could match him inch for inch in a contest of wills, but the very _idea_ of butting heads with the Turian was exhausting, and the Commander took him ashore at every stop. Tali shook her head and made a note to give Shepard an easier time during their next landing.

A moment of silence passed between them as Garrus's mandibles twitched in a way that looked almost thoughtful. Gabby and Donnelly's whispering died suddenly in response, and Tali tried not to turn and glare at their blatant eavesdropping.

"Tali," Garrus asked with a hint of concern, "is this an AI thing?"

Tali bristled, and inside her helmet, her suit beeped a quiet warning that her blood pressure had just spiked. If he tried to twist this into a discussion about Quarians and AI, she would have his fringe for a mantle piece.

"No, this is not an 'AI thing,' as you so brilliantly put it. You tell _me_ where exactly we're going to fit a three-ton radial heat sink adjacent to the forward battery. Oh, here's a thought; why don't we just use your room?"

Garrus ignored the last bit, but pressed on. "Come on, Tali, think about it. If we divert the heat starboard of the battery and drop in an IES, we could discharge the heat while in dead space. It'll be just like the old Normandy."

Tali threw a hand in the air. "Yes, but on the old Normandy, we didn't have the ship's AI core sitting starboard of the battery."

Garrus gave a small shrug and returned to the simulation in front of him without comment. Tali opened her mouth to ask if he was listening, but stopped as she thought she saw a smirk play at the corner of his mouth. She stared at him as the implication of his expression settled in, causing her face to fall into a glower behind her mask. "Garrus, we are not going to burn out the AI core so that you can have a bigger gun," she said in a warning whisper.

He looked up. "What?" He blinked, twice, his face the very picture of innocence.

Tali threw a cautionary glance at EDI's holo-platform. The blue avatar was conspicuously absent, but EDI _did_ control all onboard monitoring, and there was no guarantee that she wasn't listening in on their conversation with keen interest. EDI had been unshackled for several days now, and Tali's attitude toward the AI had taken a corresponding tumble toward the paranoid. Having Legion onboard she could cope with, to an extent; at least Legion was a mobile platform, and limited to eavesdropping where you could actually see it.

EDI, though... EDI now had full control of every computerized part of the Normandy. Tali understood that Chakwas had barricaded off some of the medical control systems for obvious reasons, and the Quarian took some small comfort in the knowledge that at least one other crew member was sane enough to view an unshackled, omnipresent AI with the proper skepticism. But past that, there wasn't much she could do; she couldn't hide in the med bay forever, and EDI was bound to overhear some compromising conversations, like this one.

Turning her eyes back toward Garrus, she caught a glimpse of Gabby with a hand on Donnelly's arm, speaking to him in inaudible tones and staring wide-eyed at the Turian's back. _Great, _she thought with a resigned grimace. _Two hours, and this discussion will be all over the ship._

Tali shook her head and stared stubbornly at the simulations. If she looked at that damn smirk of Garrus', she was afraid she'd have to hit him. Hard.

"Keelah, you're impossible." His mandibles twitched--was that a grin? "Look, how about this; if we can carve out a space under the port observation deck-"

"Tali. Garrus. Available?"

Tali paused, her hand hovering over the image of a gutted Normandy as Mordin's voice sang in their communicators. The intrusion was unfamiliar; Mordin usually left his comm offline to prevent disturbances, instead using EDI to summon people when needed. Lately he had been more reclusive than normal, laboring over the wealth of samples they'd retrieved from the Collector ship. Tali suddenly realized that she hadn't actually _spoken_ to him since before their jump through the Omega 4 Relay.

"Yes, Mordin, we're here," Tali responded. "What's up?"

"Good. Was concerned you would be busy with repair work, comms off. Engineering; difficult job. Exhaustive mental concentration. Never much good at it, myself."

He paused. It was an un-Mordin-like pause, drawn out over several seconds.

Tali finally broke the silence. "Mordin?"

"Ah. Sorry. Commander Shepard is... up. In CIC, to be precise. Inquiring after crew status, repairs, timetable for departing Omega--"

"What?" Tali cried. "Mordin, she's supposed to be resting! Can't you send her upstairs?"

Another uncertain pause. Tali looked at Garrus again. Darkness had settled over his features, and his eyes were boring into the empty space just above the simulation. She tried to push images of Alchera from her mind as she saw his hands tighten dangerously around the edges of the console.

"Shepard is... being difficult." Tali sighed and raised a hand to her head. Mordin was calling for backup. "Won't listen. Doctor Chakwas threatened sedatives; ignored. Don't want to resort to physical removal, due to injuries. But won't move. Utterly intractable," he added with a hint of amazement.

Tali sighed. "I thought EDI had locked her in."

"Had, Tali'Zorah. Shepard managed to hack lower-level security systems, disengage lock from personal terminal." His voice suddenly lifted a bit. "Absolutely brilliant. Must look into tighter integration of internal security protocols with system architecture. Impressive effort."

_Of course Mordin would find this academically fascinating_, Tali thought. "So I'm guessing you want us to come up there and try to talk some sense into her."

"Precisely. Haste... would be advisable. Shepard has been recouperating for less than one human sleep cycle; further delays and exhaustion could complicate, impede recovery significantly."

Tali nodded. "Alright, Mordin, we'll be up. In the meantime, just give her a wide berth." She switched off her comm with a sigh. She understood her and Garrus' unique positions as the only remaining members of Shepard's original combat team, but if the last two days had proven anything, it was that not even a Reaper could slow the Commander when she wanted something. If Shepard was up and taking charge of the CIC, it would take more than a heart-to-heart to get her back into bed.

Tali reached up and touched her helmet, near the brow; it was a gesture she had seen the human crew use many times as a sign of exasperation, and even though she couldn't reach the knot in her forehead, it somehow seemed appropriate.

"So, Garrus, do you want to trying talking to her first, or should--"

She found herself staring at empty space where the Turian had stood just moments before. She paused and looked around; he was nowhere. Donnelly and Gabby were gone as well. A glance down at the console Garrus had been working on showed deep dents on the frame where Garrus' thumbs had pressed into the metal. The frame itself was caved in the center, crunched from an uncontrolled Turian grip.

Tali cursed under her breath and spun toward the door. The last thing she needed was to have to pull those two apart when they were at each other's throats. With luck, she thought, she could cut them off before the carnage started.

Shepard heard Garrus coming before she saw him. Or maybe "heard" wasn't the right word; she felt his arrival ripple through the crew like a stone hitting the water. Some of the Cerberus crew were never entirely comfortable having a Turian onboard, and despite his relatively even temper, Garrus's bad days did little to endear him to human doubters. He was the commander's right-hand man, true, and a constant presence in her landing parties, but his towering frame and ability to project hostility clear across the ship unsettled many of the humans aboard. It was thus unsurprising that when he stalked through the ship in a bad mood, a profound silence tended to settle in his wake, lifting only once a more affable member of the landing team--usually Tali or Mordin--passed through on an errand.

So it wasn't hard for Shepard to notice the uptick in the footsteps behind her as bodies pulled aside to clear a path. She resisted the urge to turn around and acknowledge Garrus's approach, deliberately keeping her eyes on the galaxy map. She leaned into the railing before her with a small prayer that she looked bored, rather than structurally unstable. She absently fingered the sling holding her right arm in place--an unpleasant, but unavoidable concession to Chakwas' and Mordin's fits once they got wind of her arrival in the command center. _At least Miranda didn't argue when she had to pass off command,_ she thought with a hint of wry amusement.

Moment after moment dragged on under the unnatural hush that had descended upon the CIC. She was about to turn, willing to concede an inch in their eternal back-and-forth, when he was behind her, much closer than she'd calculated.

"Commander Shepard."

She nearly jumped. He had come impossibly close: much closer than she had expected and much, much closer than was comfortable. His face was only a few inches from hers, despite being two steps down on the deck floor. He wasn't moving, but every square inch of him was tensed, every nerve a vibrating live wire. Shepard took quick inventory of Garrus' posture; his fringe was flared an inch higher than normal, his shoulders back, his mandibles flattened. She had seen him like this somewhere before.

The recollection tickled at the back of her tired mind as she met his eyes. They were dark, much darker than normal, and roiling with something she couldn't place. And he smelled, though she realized that she had never been close enough to notice before; the closest comparison she could think of was the scent of damp earth and ozone, like the air on Earth before a summer storm.

Pulling herself from her assessment, Shepard realized that she had pressed her back against the railing in retreat. No way to save face now; half the crew had seen that little maneuver.

She pushed the tightness down her throat and looked at him levelly. "Garrus." The resulting tone was chillier than she'd intended.

"Have you got a minute?" Their old dance, reversed. It wasn't a question.

Shepard instantly mapped the layout of the crew along the deck in her head. It was nearly time for the crew to be relieved by the next shift, which meant the CIC was briefly over-staffed. Two dozen crew members on duty; ten seated at their stations, another dozen stopped in mid-movement around the deck, two or three out of the CIC but due back at any moment. Joker in front, headpiece muted, likely hearing every word. EDI silently monitoring every breath. A fight was out of the question.

_No. This is _Garrus, _dammit._ She grimaced at the retreating thought. The instinct to fight was a reflex, born from years of bare-knuckled brawls in back alleys and honed by her Spectre training.

She had been shot for the first time when she was thirteen. After that it had been a quick learning process; every room you entered had the potential to save your life or kill you, depending on how you used it. Always expect a fight. Always have one hand on your gun. Always know exactly where the bystanders are, where they're going, and how long it will take them to get there.

It was sad, in a way, that she ran her ship under the same neuroses that she'd suffered as a street rat--but the fact remained that those constant backwards glances had kept her alive this long. But now, faced with a dangerous Turian whose anger and intent she could read like an open book... she was at a loss.

Garrus was still in his armor, but his gloves were missing. Shepard couldn't help noticing how his talons flashed under the artificial lighting.

At a lack for a better answer, she threw him a smirk, trying for all the world to look cocky. "Sure," she said in response to the question that still lingered in the air between them. She stepped down from her spot in front of the map, silently thankful she didn't stumble on the way down.

The two walked back to the briefing room, passing through Mordin's lab. The Salarian watched the two of them pass, but said nothing.

Shepard walked in past Garrus and headed toward the rear of the briefing table, trying subtly to put as much space between her and the Turian as possible. "If this is about being caged up in my room," she began dismissively, "I didn't have time to-"

A hand on her shoulder spun her and threw her against the wall, sending her back slamming against the metal. The impact jolted her sore ribs, and she let out a choked gasp.

Garrus was inches from her, then, towering over her with flames in his eyes. Curses died in her throat.

"Do you think this is a joke?" His voice was dangerously low, barely rising above a growl. The air crackled around him, and she saw his fringe flair. His whole face was alive with a barely-contained rage.

Shepard didn't--_couldn't_ respond. She recognized his stance, then, and her chest tightened.

His every limb tensed, every nerve on fire, eyes lit up with predatory rage; it was the same way he had looked on the Citadel, right before killing Sidonis.

He was a predator, about to rip the throat out of his prey. Out of Shepard.

She had almost stopped him. Every time she saw the darkness settle over Garrus' eyes she cursed herself again for being too slow, for not grabbing Sidonis' arm when she had the chance. For all her big speeches on moving past revenge, on honoring the memory of his squad, she had choked at the last possible goddamn moment. Half a second of hesitation, that was all it had taken; Garrus had shot Sidonis dead and left Shepard with her arm hovering in the air, reaching for a ghost.

They hadn't spoken about it since, except when Garrus offered a brief thanks for letting him take the shot. The thought made her laugh bitterly. "_Letting" him take the shot. Bullshit._ He had seen her reaching for Sidonis, clear as day. He had seen her choke. He was smart enough to know that hesitation like that made her a liability. But he followed her anyway, never uttering another word about the incident.

The episode replayed over the present as Garrus hovered over her, radiating an unnatural rage. Shepard couldn't decide whether to be ashamed or terrified. His claws were digging painfully into her shoulder. Adrenaline rushed through her veins, and she caught herself gauging the distance between her and the exit. _2.1 meters, even terrain, his arm between me and the door. No chance._

_No. This is Garrus._ Garrus. _Stop!_

Almost against her will, she found her hand rising slowly to his arm. Her fingers fell on the wrist of his armor, touching down lightly and avoiding any sudden movements. Her index finger came to rest, almost by accident, on the back of his bare claw. In a final bid to regain control of her own heart rate, she forced herself to meet his gaze, grasping blindly for calm in the storm of her own mind. She pressed her fingers into the back of his claw in a silent plea to release the pressure on her shoulder, and searched his eyes for any sign of recognition.

_Garrus, _she pleaded silently. _It's me._

Silently and without warning, something unraveled. The fire behind Garrus' eyes went dark. Rage gave way to blankness, followed by embarrassment, and then horror. He stepped back quickly, suddenly transfixed on the spot where his talons had left a hole in Shepard's jacket and a red pressure mark against the skin underneath.

For a long moment, neither said anything. Shepard's heart was still drumming against the inside of her chest. She resisted the urge to look at her own shoulder, but hoped for both their sakes that it wasn't bleeding.

The doors hissed open, shattering the silence. Tali stood framed by the door, one hand on the wall, the other frozen in mid-gesture from opening the lock. She stared at the two of them, stunned.

Garrus knew without looking up that it was Tali in the doorway, though he caught Shepard's eyes dart toward the interloper. He flexed his claw once, glancing down at it almost in disbelief. He could still taste the bile in his throat, phantom-like as the room came into focus around him.

He didn't hear Tali's hesitant question, or Shepard's level response. His mind was elsewhere, too busy reeling to process the quiet words the women exchanged near him.

He had been frustrated with her before--hell, it was a rare day when one of their barbs _wasn't_ meant seriously--but never like this. Never to the point of laying a hand on her. The honor-bound Turian soldier inside of him recoiled as he realized with rising horror that he'd just assaulted his commanding officer.

_No,_ he thought with a rising bubble of anger and confusion. _Something's not right_. Sifting through the chaos of the last few minutes, he couldn't pinpoint what had tipped him over the edge of common sense. He wondered briefly if the flare-up was a side-effect of exhaustion, or the last traces of narcotics that Mordin had given him. Maybe the debate with Tali had worn more on his nerves than he'd realized.

But when he stole a fleeting glance at Shepard--her arm in a sling, rings under her eyes, her hair tousled--he felt a dangerous clench in his shoulders. He ripped his attention away to Tali before his emotions--whatever they were--had any chance to boil over again.

"Garrus?" she asked. It came across as the tail end of a question that he hadn't heard, but he knew Tali well enough to guess confidently that it had been "is everything alright in here?"

He nodded, mostly to himself. "Fine."

For a moment, nobody spoke. Confronted by the awkward silence, Tali glanced at the two of them nervously before stepping backwards through the frame. He noticed the tactical nature of the retreat, never baring her back to possible attack, and felt his stomach turn.

Then they were alone again.

Shepard said nothing. She always left it for him to start off in moments like this, and normally he appreciated that; it gave him the opening gamut. But right now, the last thing he felt like doing was trying to explain his reaction to Shepard when he could barely understand it himself. A minute passed in deafening silence.

"Garrus." He looked up, almost against his will, at the sound of his name. Her voice was quiet, and laced with concern. "Is everything okay?"

He wasn't sure how to respond. The question sparked a struggle between two equally plausible, and equally unsatisfying, options. His logical side moved to assure her that he was fine, offer a formal apology for assaulting his superior officer, and ask how she was feeling, as a friend. His gut, on the other hand, demanded that he carry her back to her quarters and barricade her inside until she was rested and reasonable again.

_Not that she was ever reasonable to begin with_, he thought with some irony. And, as was far too often the case, his logical mind won out.

"You're injured." He was surprised by the levelness of his own voice, and shook his head. "The crew is still shaken from the Collector attack, and seeing you staggering around like a wounded Krogan with a blood grudge has everyone on edge."

He was grateful to see her eyes light up with relief, even as she grimaced. "I don't look that bad."

He grinned slightly. "I get half my face blown off, and your way of saying 'hello' is to call me ugly. But you come back from a self-proclaimed suicide mission and I can't even say you look tired? That's hypocrisy."

"At its finest." Her small smile faltered. "Are you sure you're okay, Garrus?"

He hadn't expected that. She was catching him off guard a lot lately. He wondered again if the residual painkillers had dulled his senses; or maybe she was just delirious with exhaustion, and acting erratically. Either way, Garrus would have been happiest if he could chalk it up to chemicals and battle fatigue, and leave the deeper analysis alone.

He decided to dodge the question. "Unlike you, I _have_ slept. Enough. For a Turian, of course."

She looked at him skeptically for a moment before her eyes softened almost imperceptibly. "That's not what I meant."

The last word hung in the air like a accusation. Garrus found himself clenching his fist, and forced it open again. _Shit. _She wasn't drugged; even exhausted and beaten to within an inch of her life, she was as sharp as ever. _No way to avoid it now. _

"I'm... fine, Shepard. It's you I'm worried about." He sighed--by the spirits, it felt good to say that. "You'll kill yourself if you don't rest. Everyone's worried," he added a little quicker than was necessary.

Color tickled at the edge of her cheeks, though Garrus never found out whether if was from embarassment or fury. EDI materialized on the table.

"Commander Shepard, you have an urgent message. It's from Aria T'Loak. She would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience."

Shepard opened her mouth to respond, but Garrus interrupted her as his hand shot out and grasped her wrist.

For a moment he could barely hide his own surprise. He didn't remember the train of thought that had led to him grabbing her; the movement itself was a blur of the near-past as well. He was formulating an excuse when she turned her head to him, a puzzled expression on her face.

Seeing her then, Garrus nearly gave up. The Commander mask was back on, all warmth, familiarity and concern washed from her expression. The furrow in her brow threw deep shadows over her eyes, highlighting dark rings that made her look much older than he knew her to be.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. His stomach sank. She stood before him threadbare, all sinews and frayed nerves, bewilderment--but no spark--in her searching eyes.

At a confused raise of her eyebrow, he shook his head. _Don't._

Shepard remained silent as she seemed to consider the hand around her wrist, though her face remained impassive. Turning to EDI, she said, "Tell Aria I'll meet with her tomorrow."

EDI obediently blinked out of existence, leaving them alone again. Garrus released a breath he hadn't known he was holding, and loosened his grip without letting go entirely.

Shepard smirked at him. "There. Happy?"

"It's a start." _Not much of one_, he admitted to himself, but it was a small miracle that she was conceding this much. "Now, for the second time in a day, go sleep."

"Yes, Mom." She gave him a small grin, then, and almost imperceptibly tilted her head toward one side. The small, familiar gesture of inquiry suddenly reminded Garrus of his talons on her wrist; satisfied that she would keep her word, he let go. As he stepped back to let her pass, he thought he saw her eyes dart over his face searchingly.

Shepard was nearly to the door when he finally spoke. "Shepard." She turned back to look at him, the inquisitiveness returning to her features. He recognized her analytical face, and knew he could never make himself entirely comfortable under that stare. "Please, stay up there. Think of it as a favor to me for saving your ass on the Collector base."

A smirk danced across Shepard's face. As she turned to leave he thought he caught a glimpse of her flexing her wrist, and barely stopped himself as he reached to take it back.

"I'm not in the habit of working as someone's private investigator, even for self-proclaimed royalty." Shepard hoped that, in the dimness of Afterlife, Aria couldn't see the whiteness of her knuckles around her drink. They had been at this for some time now, and Shepard was tired of the formalities that Aria kept throwing at her.

Aria sounded slightly bemused. "No, but you are in the habit of throwing yourself blindly into unknown situations," she responded, the smirk working its way into her voice. "That's why I need you to go. You're good at it. And if there's anything dangerous down there, you'd be the most likely person to make it out."

She had a point. "And what makes you think there's anything dangerous on Alingon?"

Aria threw her head back and laughed. "A distress beacon, coming from an uninhabited planet whose core generates enough magnetic activity to fry any ship stupid enough to try and land on it? Call it a hunch." She grinned wickedly at Shepard, who was carefully studying the ice in her drink.

"Why don't you just send some mercs down to check it out? You've got half of Omega at your beck and call."

Aria nearly looked offended. "More than half, I assure you." She waved a hand. "They're all muscle and no brains. Mercenaries have their uses, though mostly as cannon fodder. I want to know what's going on down there, and why. That's why I need you." She leaned forward in her seat, elbows on her knees; the posture looked unusual on her. The usual smooth mask of apathy had been fallen away, and Shepard suddenly realized that she'd never seen Aria looking so... intent. "You're the best the galaxy has to offer, Shepard."

Shepard allowed herself a grimace, then. "I'm not a hired gun, Aria." She was glad that she had left the ship in something other than her Cerberus uniform; it was nice not to have a visible reminder of how blatantly she was lying. "What makes you think I'm even interested?"

Aria's face became serious, though the smile didn't leave her lips. "Because sometimes, I know you better than you know yourself. You and I are powerful women, Shepard. Neither of us got to where we are by being accepting the easy answer. There _is _something down there." Her eyes flashed. "Don't pretend the curiosity isn't killing you."

Shepard stared down at her drink and fought back a curse. Even after she had learned to accept the uneasy relationship between herself and Aria, Shepard hated admitting when the Asari was right. The two days she had spent locked in her quarters like some caged dog had been unbearable; she couldn't sleep more than six hours at a stretch no matter how exhausted she became, and had resorted to cleaning and re-cleaning her armor while trying not to relive the incident in the medical bay. She needed to _move_ again. Peace and quiet had never been a part of her life, and the thought of suffering under the burden of stability was enough to make her stomach turn.

There was also the issue of finances. The pay was good--far too good to turn down lightly. She wasn't sure how the Illusive Man would take her defection once the initial rage subsided, though she suspected she might eventually need to blast her way through the tantrum he had worked up over losing both the SR-2 and the Collector base in one day. Not to mention that a crack crew didn't come cheap, and neither did repairs to the most advanced ship in the galaxy--and while she knew her team would follow her so long as the post-mission euphoria lasted, their cash reserves were drying up quickly.

All things considered, the Normandy was screwed unless they started pulling in some heavy freelancing. Hell, Miranda had practically suggested as much in the last briefing; she had looked Shepard in the eye and advised that they seek "alternative sources of income." Jacob had referred to the idea of "merc work" with no small hint of disgust, but even he had seen the ship's balance sheets, and knew something had to be done. They weren't exactly swimming in cash.

Meanwhile, Alingon's ominous form loomed in her head, rust brown and wild and darkly alluring. It was impassible by conventional navigation; her only option would be to shield the Kodiak and perform the landing manually. It would be like fording a rapid river, blind, in the dead of night. She suddenly remembered an old song, one that the slum children had sung at the shores of the refuse-choked river, a raging flood of reeking water roaring between them and the high-rises lining the opposite shore.

_I will cross, if mine own horse is pulled from me._

Shepard put her drink down a touch harder than was necessary, and fought back a sigh. Over the din of Afterlife's pounding music, her better judgment roared bloody murder at her as she accepted Aria's proposal.

_Oh, it wasn't night, not yet night,  
but I slept a little, slept a little, and had a dream.  
In my dream, my faithful black horse  
Was panicking, struggling, and rushing madly.  
Wild winds blew down from the east,  
and snatched the cap from off my head.  
But my lieutenant was wise, and understood my dream.  
He said, "Oh, you will be lost, and your mighty head along with you!"  
_(Russian trad.)


	3. Annan Water, pt 2

_Ichiban: Domo for the third time to my chou-jin reader, Sapidus, who was kind enough to invest insane amounts of time and effort yet again into making my writing legible. Domo also to Link, for being so chipper when I just want to throttle things. Apologies **again **to everyone for the insane delay; I've been on the road for the last two months, living out of my car. (It's a vacation, not a necessity, mercifully!) It's been a crazy experience, and I hope to cram more writing in than I have so far._

_Niban: Closing lyrics are "Annan Water", (c) the Decemberists. No infringement intended-just a little situational love!_

_Sanban: As always, please R&R!_

* * *

Humming was one of Commander Shepard's final guilty pleasures. It was the last vestige of a childhood marked by songs, sung in dozens of tongues she didn't understand and a handful she did. Pidgin multilingualism was a side-effect of growing up in the slums, and the first foreign words she ever learned were lyrics whose sounds she memorized by rote. Even after basic linguistics training in the military, she didn't understand more than a handful of phrases in half-forgotten songs, but the sounds themselves-lilting, drumming and flowing by turns-brought her comfort in her quieter moments.

Now that the mantel of responsibility had settled around her shoulders, she didn't have the same opportunity to sing. In her years as a soldier, she had found that the thinnest veneer of military decorum was often the only thing standing between order and chaos. In the end, humming had become a reluctant casualty of the same stoicism that she had learned in her adolescence and refined in N7 training. After the incident on Akuze she had wrapped the numbness around herself like armor, and that detachment had saved herself and her crew more times than she could count.

And while her stone-cold exterior fell away for a number of reasons - to seethe, to threaten, to laugh - it did not hum.

But as she stood at the Normandy's helm, fully suited for landing and gazing out at the looming rust-brown form of Alingon before her, Shepard absentmindedly inducted Joker into the exceedingly small club of people who had heard it do just that.

The clicking of keys halted, bringing Shepard back around to the moment. Vaguely annoyed at herself, she justified the slip by reminding herself that she'd heard what he listened to at the helm - audio that was supposed to go to his headphones - and that he was hardly in a position to tease her over her habits.

Not that that stopped him.

"'Annan Water,' Commander?" he said with a scoff. "Way to be reassuring."

Shepard glanced down at him, trying to keep her voice level. _This from the man who-_ She shook her head. _Never mind. _"You know it?"

Joker shrugged without looking up from the console. "It's popular at the Academy - you hear it a lot in pilot training. Usually before a suicide landing sim, though. Not exactly what you'd call 'uplifting.'"

She had no response. Shepard had a hard time imagining the song ringing down the vaulted marble halls of the academy; for her it was woven in with the whipping wind and the stench of urban rot, with the memory of slum children as they raced barefoot down the banks of the river, lithe feet dancing off the slick rocks. Sharp rocks and a permanent layer of slime made the run suicidal for an adult, but tiny toes could find hidden nooks and deftly navigate sharp ridges. The rush of wind and speed and barely-maintained balance was intoxicating, a sensation that sang in echoes along her spine every time she raced across a battlefield. In the crumbling neighborhoods, danger was an oppression; but on the banks, dashing at top speed along a twenty-foot plunge onto sharp rocks and refuse-swollen waters, it was liberation. The children sang as they spun along the banks with wild abandon, masters of their own fate. The run was a dance for freedom, an affirmation of independence; if death was everywhere, they could at least call out to it on their own terms.

Shepard had never been tall for an adult, but even her feet had become too big and unwieldy for the rocks. The racing song – the "Annan Water" that Joker had referred to – had devolved into a sort of a mindless tic that surfaced when she found herself rushing blindly at a problem. She knew the lyrics, but mostly by rote. She knew that had to do with crossing a river, but beyond that the words held little meaning to her. She recalled that the singer eventually resorts to bargaining with the river, and promises to sacrifice his own life on the return trip so that he can cross.

Glancing up at Alingon - impossible, deadly Alingon - she did have to admit that it seemed morbidly appropriate.

The planet loomed before them, quietly mocking thousands of years of technological progress. Electromagnetic storms swirled over the planet's rust-brown surface, nearly eclipsing the eddying ridges and valleys below. Nobody (or at least no cartographers of public record) knew how deep the canyons ran; Aria's warnings about the difficulties of surveying the planet had been dead on. The activity generated by the planet's magnetized crust had been more than enough to fry the half dozen probes EDI had sent down. For all practical purposes, they were stuck relying on the rough holos that the asari had provided of the planet's topography.

Shepard hazarded a glance at the altitude gauge in front of Joker. They were within shuttle range. "How's the shielding coming on the Kodiak?"

"Gabby called up about half an hour ago and said it was ready." His fingers paused mid-keystroke, and he looked up at her. "Sorry if I'm out of line here, Commander, but... you can't be serious about bringing Tali down there with you."

Shepard opened her mouth to reply when she heard the click of heels approach behind her. "Her suit will shield her on backup power for up to ten hours," came the reply from Shepard's elbow. Miranda was beside her, extending a datapad. "Provided the shuttle can make it down there, of course. Commander."

Shepard glanced at Miranda as she took the maintenance report. The doubt in Miranda's voice was unmistakable, and poorly hidden. She forced herself to ignore it as she skimmed the report in silence. It had been a week since her meeting with Aria, and Tali had taken the lead in creative engineering for the mission. She had designed the shielding with Gabby and Donnelly, and spent all of her free time adding double- and triple-redundancy systems to her own suit.

Personally, Shepard couldn't remember the last time she'd seen the quarian throw herself into a project with such enthusiasm. Every time they crossed paths in the mess, Tali had wasted no time in bursting forth with a stream of updates, projections, and half-muttered questions directed mostly at herself. Shepard had never found heated rations as enjoyable as when she could sit quietly while Tali rattled off technical updates. The commander understood less than half of what left Tali's mouth in an excited rush, but the specifics were unimportant; more than anything, Shepard found it relaxing simply to bask in the quarian's enthusiasm.

Tali's excitement had been the one bright point in the preceding week. The crew seemed relieved to have something to do after their primary objective had been cleared, but many were still recovering from injuries sustained during the trip through the Omega-4 relay. That sense of continuity kept many of the enlisted crew moving without complaint, though Shepard reluctantly admitted it was little more than that white lie that kept the ship from grinding to an operational halt.

Her landing team had held up better than expected, though she could sense a growing unease with the forthcoming mission. Miranda had remained uncharacteristically mum with her opinions, though Shepard couldn't decide whether that was from doubt or a sudden burst of personal admiration for her commander (though she suspected it was the former). Grunt had been thrilled by the possibility of going planet-side until Shepard had dissuaded him of the idea, pointing out that there wasn't likely to be any life down there worth maiming. Jack had been impossible as only she could be, her taunts hitting more than her usual share of raw nerves with the rest of the landing crew.

Garrus... had been scarce. After their "discussion" on the bridge the previous week, Shepard had seen neither hide nor fringe of him outside of the cursory mission briefing after her discussion with Aria. She never questioned his professionalism, but his appearance at the briefing had surprised her. She wasn't sure why, but she had half-expected to have to trudge to the battery, mission report in hand, to brief him personally. She almost wished she had been forced to do just that; it was the least she owed him, and it was the least humiliating form of apology she could think of.

"Garrus and Tali are prepped for departure, Commander." Miranda looked at her watch.

Shepard nodded. "Have the shuttle fueled and ready to leave in ten. We only have a few hours of daylight left, and I want to get this over with."

Miranda fell into step beside her as she made her way toward the elevator. The two strode in step with one another, their boots puncturing the white noise of the command center. She could feel Miranda preparing her official statement of objection, and as the doors to the elevator swished closed, Shepard suddenly wished she was alone.

"I don't mean to question your judgment, Commander," Miranda began, and Shepard barely stopped a bubble of reflexive sarcasm. "But are you sure you want to go personally? We're not sure how the magnetic interference will affect your nanotech upgrades. Even with the upgrades, you're still healing. And even if you _were _in peak physical condition, Alingon has a 56 hour day; if the beacon crosses the dusk line, we won't-"

_We won't be able to get you until morning._ Shepard knew where this was going, and cut her off. "I've known Garrus and Tali for a long time, and I trust them to help me get the job done before it comes to that." She added a small smirk for effect. "Besides, all this confinement has me feeling a little restless."

Miranda folded her arms and turned to face the elevator doors. "I won't second guess you, Shepard. Not after what happened on the Collector base. But I wouldn't be doing my duty as your XO if I didn't tell you that this whole operation doesn't _feel_ right."

Shepard shrugged. "You're the one who said we needed cash, Miranda. Or is the Illusive Man going to restart our allowance?"

Miranda's faced darkened. Shepard regretted the jab for a brief second, but reminded herself that knowing how to push the other woman's buttons was a tactical advantage she wasn't about to let go unused.

Shepard sighed and turned to face her as the doors opened. "Look, Miranda. I don't trust Aria either, but we don't have many options right now. I didn't trust Cerberus, but they still gave me a damn good team and the best ship in the galaxy. Right now, we need money, and she has it. Lots of it."

A wrinkle formed between Miranda's flawless brows as they stepped from the elevator into the chaos of the flight deck. "She's using you for something."

The commander grinned slightly. "Of course. I wouldn't expect anything less." The other woman opened her mouth, but Shepard cut her off with a hand to the arm, and dropped her voice to an earnest murmur. "I'm leaving you in charge of the ship while we're gone. If anything smells fishy - anything at all - you get the hell out of here. Garrus, Tali and I can take care of ourselves."

For a moment, Miranda looked mildly stunned. Shepard didn't blame her; she'd never spoken so frankly to the Cerberus operative before. Their relationship was stiff and formal on a good day. But the woman had just followed her through the Omega-4 relay and back, and had run the ship flawlessly in Shepard's absence. It was hard, but Shepard knew she owed her more than a perfunctory nod and pat on the back.

"Commander," Miranda began, "I... apologize for my earlier remarks. I have full faith in your judgment, and your landing crew." It was Shepard's turn to hide her surprise; Miranda didn't usually apologize, let alone compliment the others. The XO let a small smirk form at the corner of her mouth. "Naturally, I'd be more comfortable with a biotic at your back, but I'll respect your decision."

Shepard grinned. "Feeling restless, Miranda?"

"Let's just say that when you talked about being cooped up in your room, I understood." She grimaced, and turned to look at the swarm of activity on the deck.

Shepard patted her on the back. "You'll be fine. You can come next time, if it makes you feel any better."

Miranda laughed as Shepard walked toward the shuttle. "Great. And I bet I'll have to fight Vakarian for the front seat."

Shepard laughed in return as she reached the Kodiak. All three shifts of mechanics had been called up to prep the upgrades for the shuttle, and the deck swarmed with bodies, and rang with the clanging of metal punctured by scattered outbursts of colorful language. Gabby was dashing across the hangar deck, hurling orders at a small cluster of exhausted-looking mechanics who scattered rapidly toward their stations at her approach.

Shepard found Tali and Donnelly beside the Kodiak, heads together over a datapad. Tali raised her head at Shepard's approach.

"How does everything look?" Shepard asked, studying the shuttle. There wasn't much of a visible difference, aside from a few gunmetal gray plates riveted down over the front engines.

"All good so far, Commander," Donnelly replied. "We had to use parts from Omega - all off-brand, no titles. Very shady. But Aria provided it all free of charge, so who am I to complain?" He shrugged, flashing a familiar good-natured smile. "Besides, now that we're a 'financially independent' operation, I figured I would slip a few extra... _non-essential _bits onto the requisition list."

Tali turned to him, her voice subtly annoyed. "This isn't college, Donnelly. You don't take stuff just because it's free."

"No offense, Tali, but this is coming from a quarian?" Donnelly ignored the slight stiffening of Tali's spine. "Even if we don't 'need' the parts," he said, adding finger quotations for effect, "we're still stocked to the gills in case the Illusive Man decides to actually grow a pair and come after us." His grinned threatened to split his face, and Shepard wondered if she'd heard his accent thicken slightly. "Though that's not likely with you around, Commander."

His quarian counterpart looked less enthusiastic. Her gaze lingered reluctantly on the datapad. "I can't lie to you, Shepard. I'm not entirely comfortable taking supplies from Aria - for a number of reasons - but we don't have much of a choice. The samples we examined did hold up under advanced stress tests, though, so I'm willing to give it a shot."

Shepard frowned. Tali's preternatural understanding of engineering and breadth of experience put most grizzled human mechanics to shame, and Shepard knew that she was honest almost to a fault. Shepard wasn't a fan of placing herself in Aria's debt, even temporarily - or, even worse, putting her crew in harm's way with faulty parts. But if Tali was willing to try, then Shepard would follow her without hesitation.

She paused a moment, hoping to change the subject, and noticed a gleaming black scarf draped over Tali's head. She hadn't seen the design before. "What about your suit?"

Tali's eyes glinted visibly behind her mask as she touched the harness on her chest. "Oh, this? Brand new triple redundancy. I've got upwards of 60 hours of backup power before the systems switches to analog and leaves me swimming in medigel." She tilted her head in the same conspiratorial gesture that always preceded her private jokes. "It would take a geth with a military-grade EMP and death wish to put this suit offline."

Shepard smiled. "Hopefully we won't run into any of those, then."

"Knowing our luck, I wouldn't be surprised," Tali said, a twinge of bitterness working its way into her voice. "But I did take the liberty of upgrading your and Garrus' suits, just in case. The helmets were tricky, but all your major life support systems should be insulated against electromagnetic interference. With, of course, the same disclaimer about geth and death wishes."

Satisfied and more than a little amused by Tali's sudden boasting, Shepard nodded and clambered into the shuttle. Garrus was seated opposite her, head back against the wall, eyes closed. His arms were folded across his chest, gun resting across his knees.

"Napping on the job, Garrus?" she said with a quick grin as she took the seat opposite.

"Right, because you wouldn't know anything about that," he replied dryly. She barely held back a relieved laugh. Even in his worst moods, Garrus had an uncanny ability to make her relax. Some days, she imagined that his dispassionate wisecracks were the only thing keeping her sane.

"Weren't you trying to get me to sleep more?" she asked, arching an eyebrow. He still hadn't opened his eyes.

"For your information, I wasn't sleeping. What do you humans call it? Meditation?"

Tali climbed in beside them as Shepard eyed him skeptically. "I didn't know you were into the search for enlightenment."

He shrugged, and peered at Shepard through one heavily-lidded eye. "Enlightenment, relaxation, stress relief..."

Shepard's face went hot as his voice trailed off, reminding her of the last time he had brought up that particular topic. She spoke more frankly with him than anyone else on the ship, and had indirectly shared more of her personal history with him than anyone else, save maybe Tali. It had dawned on her, as she listened to his descriptions of life on a Turian war ship, that she knew very little of Garrus' past outside of a handful of scattered anecdotes and a vague sense of antipathy towards his father.

Perhaps it was only the recognition of that distance, but being audience to the particulars of his "conquest" was an exercise in discomfort that she had no desire to repeat. She hadn't been surprised the story ended how it did, but his need to need to articulate it raised her blood pressure. Sitting through the story in in a carefully-maintained silence, she could have sworn she saw the faintest hint of a smug grin playing at his mandibles as he gaged her discomfort. The whole scene was juvenile, and, she had recognized with an flare of irritation, it was utterly like him.

Goading one another was as normal to them as breathing, but _that_ conversation had crossed some invisible line, some unspoken rule that Shepard hadn't even been aware of until that moment, and couldn't even begin to articulate. She had done what she always did when she wasn't sure how to react; she got angry. At first she'd managed to swallow it, and pushed down anything more than a disapproving glance until she was safely out of the battery. Once the doors had closed behind her, though, it had become a battle to keep her fists unclenched as she moved swiftly across the mess hall. Once alone, she had channeled her fury into composing a nasty e-mail to Joker about his choice of "entertainment" at the helm. The resulting message had been unnecessarily harsh, she knew, but Joker never said a word in response; when she had spoken to him afterwards, he had simply thrown her a look that was equal parts sympathy and inquiry. Shepard wondered for a moment whether he had been eavesdropping on her and Garrus' earlier conversation, but pushed the thought down in sheer embarassment.

The unpleasant memory was thrust from her mind as Tali clambered over her to lean her head in beside the pilot's in the cockpit. After a brief exchange of words, the quarian returned and settled in next to her commander, facing the rear of the shuttle. "All systems are green."

Gabby appeared at the hatch, slightly out of breath, and put one hand on the raised door as Donnelly hastily materialized at her flank. "Everything looks good from out here. We're ready when you are, Commander."

Shepard nodded. Her heart drummed lightly against the inside of her chest, a familiar beat it always played in prelude to a blind mission. She slid on her breather helmet, grateful that it would hide the lingering redness in her cheeks, and saw the pilot and Garrus do the same. "Let's go."

Gabby slapped the hatch and stepped back with a salute as the door closed like a tomb over them.

* * *

Joker had managed to maneuver the Normandy into near-orbit, and it only took fifteen minutes for the Kodiak to reach Alingon's gravity well and begin its descent to the surface. Tali passed the time theorizing aloud about the beacon's technology, with an occasional pause to translate into layman's terms for Shepard and the turian.

Garrus, for his part, passed the time mostly in silence. He couldn't bring himself to feign much interest in the beacon's tech. He was busy running scenarios in his head, mapping out responses to electrical storms or an early nightfall in various environments they might encounter on the surface. There were too many variables, too many unexplained motivations on all sides, and the uncertainty of it all had him on edge.

He hazarded a glance at Shepard, who was surreptitiously shifting her glance toward the window as the planet came into focus. Tali didn't notice the lapse in her commander's attention, and pattered on in that strange combination of tech babble and layman qualifiers that she threw around when she got excited.

Despite finally forcing Shepard to consent to twenty-four hours of bed rest, Garrus couldn't help but notice the lingering exhaustion playing around the corners of her eyes. She had launched straight into preparations after returning from her meeting with Aria, and the team had gotten only the most perfunctory overview of the mission. There was a beacon that shouldn't be there, and it was their job to find it, salvage as much of it as possible, and poke around for a few hours before coming back. But Garrus' past run-ins with Aria had left him with what he felt was a healthy abiding skepticism of the asari's motives, and he couldn't shake the unease that had settled over him after Shepard's curt briefing.

What bothered him more was the fact that Shepard was going along with it. The entire operation reeked to the Outer Rim; nothing Aria touched was ever clean or straightforward. They needed money, sure, but he didn't think they were _that_ desperate, and Shepard knew better than to deal with Aria.

_So what the hell did Aria say to her? _he wondered, not for the first time.  
_  
_He grimaced behind his helmet. He hadn't exactly placed himself in much of a position to ask. After the incident in the briefing room, he had made every attempt to avoid the commander, going so far as to take meals back to the battery. She had picked him for the landing team despite his outburst, and he wasn't going to risk another incident.

In the days since their return through the relay, Garrus had moved under a black cloud. Exhaustion, stress, and frustration had coalesced into a perfect black mood. At least, that's what he told himself; it kept him from having to pick apart the niggling feeling that something else was feeding his inexplicable overreactions. Something nagged at him, sang in his ear, reminding him that he'd been in worse moods and never, _never_ had he assaulted a member of his team without warning. The fact that it was Shepard, of all people...

He clenched his jaw. Something in her posture as she looked out the window unsettled him. It had been there for a while, tickling at the back of his mind, more furiously since they had returned through the relay. Ever since she had made her grand re-entrance, something about her hadn't been _right_. It was more than the simple unsettling reality of her resurrection, the fact of which hovered permanently somewhere at the periphery of all her movements. There was something there that hadn't been there before she died, or something that _wasn't_ there that used to be, and it drove Garrus mad that he couldn't even figure out which it was.

That same sensation of wrongness had only grown worse as their initial mission had progressed, and after the Collector base, it had become too impossibly strong to ignore. Shepard wasn't the same.

Alingon blocked out Garrus' view of space, filling the window as the shuttle approached. Only a few hours stood between them and the dusk line, and he knew Shepard didn't want to risk losing the beacon overnight. In theory, the entire operation would be a quick, in-and-out procedure. In practice, Shepard had a bad history with those. Their one bit of luck was that the beacon was determined to be in the northern hemisphere, which was currently experiencing summer. Winter would have meant 37 hours of pitch darkness; as it was, they only had a twenty five-hour night staring them in the face if they weren't fast enough.

Shepard was looking out the window, gazing almost absently at the giant red-brown dot that loomed before them like an omen. The sight of Shepard's near-blank face behind her helmet made him briefly, alarmingly worry if he should have objected more loudly.

Then, something odd happened.

_"Annan water, you loom so deep and wide."  
_  
Was Shepard... singing?

He watched her in disbelief her as she stared out the window. He had caught her humming before - she routinely overestimated the soundproofing between the mess hall and battery - but never singing. He had no idea what an "annan" was, or why she was singing about water while staring at a bone-dry planet. The tune beneath the words was mournful - an attitude he wasn't used to seeing in the commander, even buried under a thin metaphor. The whole scene made him uneasy, and he wondered briefly if it had been a mistake to let her out of her quarters in the first place.

He glanced at Tali, sure she had heard it too, but the quarian was out of her seat, peering over the pilot's shoulder.

"Entering magnetosphere," the pilot said over their comms. "Strap in - it could get a bit bumpy."

No sooner had the words died in their ears than the Kodiak gave a long, low moan. It started quietly at first, so low that Garrus couldn't be sure exactly when it had first begun below the rumble of the engines. The rising protest of straining metal echoed through the cabin, building to a crescendo before it disappeared with a weak shudder. An uneasy silence descended on the cabin.

Shepard was looking over at Tali as the quarian stumbled forward into the cockpit. Garrus cursed in an agitated rumble under his breath.

"Everything okay up there?" Shepard asked, craning her neck to try and see around the frame. She had her back to the cockpit. Garrus saw Tali drop herself into the copilot's seat and send her fingers flying across the keypad.

"Tali, tell me something good," Shepard repeated, urgency working its way into her voice.

The groaning returned again, louder and more distinct this time, and accompanied by an unsettling rattle. Garrus surveyed the interior of the cabin; there were no visible signs of strain, but he knew next to nothing about the Kodiak's construction, and realized that he couldn't have recognized structural weakness if his life depended on it. He did know that they were still too high for the strain to be caused by a gravitational pull, though they were losing altitude quickly. Meanwhile the rumble was slowly rising to a steady, drumming rattle which seemed to intensify with each second.

"I'm working on it!" the quarian yelled back. Suddenly, the shuttle gave a violent shudder and an accompanying groan that roared over the sound of their comms.

"Shit!" came the pilot's voice. "Shields are failing!"

"What do you mean, _failing_?" Garrus demanded over the rising din.

"Failing! Here one second, gone the next!" he answered.

"That's not _failing_, that's _failed_," Garrus shot back, losing the levelness in his voice. He pulled his harness tighter and looked across at Shepard. Her eyes were narrowed behind her visor, but what little he could see of her expression remained inscrutable. "Shepard, we have to go back. This isn't happening today."

Tali cursed. Their comms crackled loudly over the deafening roar of the thrusters as they flared for the final descent. Shepard grabbed the seat beside her for stability as the shuttle bounced.

"Can we make it?" she yelled over the static.

Garrus' chest tightened. She had lost her mind. "Shepard, give it up! We need to go back!"

She gave no indication that she heard him through the chaos. "Tali! Can we still make it?"

The quarian hunched over the console and wrapped both hands around a large lever. "Hang on, it's going to get rough!" she cried, and wrenched it back.

Garrus cursed as he felt the shuttle shudder once, twice, and then plunge. He growled at Shepard. The time for subtlety was past. "_Are you out of your mind?_" he demanded, loud enough that he was sure she heard him. "This whole thing is going to shake apart!"

Shepard spun to him, her eyes on fire. "We can still do this! We just n-"

A roar of static drowned out the rest of her words. A garbled voice he only barely recognized as Tali's cut in and out of the chaos. The transmission was garbled, with only a few stray words leaping from the confusion of syllables and static as the Kodiak threatened to shatter around them.

Then a moment of clarity in the midst of the din; it was Shepard's voice. "...come get...! ... signal... beacon..."

What happened next was something that, even after lengthy reflection, Garrus never entirely understood. Eyes aflame, Shepard unfastened the restraints holding her in place, stood from her seat, and flung open the shuttle door. A blast of air roared through the cabin, electric white against the sky behind her as Shepard clung to the frame with both hands to stabilize herself.

Every inch of Garrus was set in motion. He threw off his own restraints and moved for her. He barely noticed her hands fly over her shoulders as her voice, musical, suddenly cut through the roaring in his comm.

"..._bones on my return_."

Singing.

The moment froze. Garrus felt his arms move like they were weighed down with lead. Shepard was at the door, arms grasping either edge of the frame, her body billowing forward like a child dangling for show from the tallest branch in a tree.

_Singing._

The pilot's voice cut in.

"...critical altitude..."

Then, like a dream, she was gone.

Time resumed. Garrus leaped to the empty frame. The wind knocked violently at his helmet as he leaned out, blinded by the storm of dust. "_Shepard!_"

A billow of blue-white light unfurled against the rust-colored ground hundreds of meters below them. A mass effect parachute.

Without a moment to think, Garrus grabbed his parachute, jerked the straps over his armor, and leaped blindly into the void after her.

* * *

_Oh gray river, your waters ramble wild_

_The horses shiver and bite against the bridle_

_But I will cross, if mine own horse is pulled from me_

_Though my mother cries that if I cry, I sure will drowned be_

_Will drowned be, will drowned be_

_Will drowned be_


	4. Foggy Dew, pt 1

_Uno: An eternal debt to my beta reader, Sapidus, who looked at one of the many beta drafts months ago, before the Lost Backup Incident of 2011. And, uh, double that for anyone who's had this story on alert – I blame a wedding, a year of law school, one unexpected thumb drive corruption, and a host of bad backup decisions. Part two of this chapter is currently held for some minor edits, but otherwise complete and on its way._

_Dos: Closing lyrics are "Hamsáfár" ("Journey Together"), lyrics by11th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam, set to music by Christopher Tin. (YouTube it. You won't regret it.)_

_Tres: Not sure how ME3 compatible things are, honestly. (Confession: I'm not done with ME3. I've been writing mostly in the space between playtime, when my better half has the controller.) But – funny story – it __**is**__ compatible with ME: Redemption, as I was halfway through the Annan Water chapters when Redemption came out. And where does Redemption take place? Alingon. Talk about blind luck. _

_Quatro: As always, please R&R!_

* * *

Out of all the blind recklessness she'd packed into her short second life, this took the cake.

Shepard felt time grind to a halt as her fingers slipped from the Kodiak's frame. Her feet had already cleared the open hatch when the scope of her stupidity blossomed before her with sudden clarity. The thudding of her heart in her ears rose until it drowned out the engines.

Gravity seized her, and she plummeted. Shepard's mind emptied. There was no fear, no strategy, no forethought. The clear, cold silence that settled on her as she plunged into the abyss was familiar, and horrible.

Her mass effect parachute registered the change in elevation and engaged almost instantly, an electric blue light exploding jaggedly across the amber sky. Shepard continued to fall as the field struggled to maintain its shape in the crosswinds. She shouted something between a curse and a prayer as the generator roared.

It was no use. Within moments, the parachute flickered, whirred, and died. Shepard plummeted.

Her hands flew to her shoulders, grasping the red pull for her manual parachute. She ripped the cord. A billow of nylon burst behind her, jerking her shoulders so fiercely that it knocked the wind from her chest. The rush of terrain slowed beneath her.

The crosswinds had other ideas. They lashed against her, straining her control of the guidelines. Strong currents twisted her cables no matter how hard she fought for control. The ground turned below her; she had no bearings, and couldn't stabilize herself long enough to study the horizon.

Topographical maps flashed through her mind as she estimated – more arbitrarily than she was comfortable with – her current position. All things considered, there was a decent probability that he Kodiak had been within a few kilometers of the beacon. Decent, but nowhere near certain enough for comfort.

Below her, a dark blemish grew on the rust surface. At first she wrote it off as her imagination, a trick of the light amplified by the dizzying descent. But as she slowed, and the winds stabilized at lower altitudes, the spot remained, and grew larger. After a hundred meters, the bucking winds settled into a strong but steady current, and Shepard was finally able to make out its contours. It was nestled in what looked to be a canyon, half-cast in shadows from the low light. It had perfectly round edges, too round to be natural, even as a shadow – it was a structure.

Her brow creased in a reflexive grimace. But as she began to consider the nature of the structure – which was visibly enormous, even from the air – she felt the expression slowly melt into a grin. If her career up to this point had prepared her for anything, it was the impossible. Tactical analysis couldn't account for the utter unpredictability of the universe, and, speaking as an impossibility herself, she appreciated the odd surprise. And now, if her intuition was correct, she was now dealing with an impossibility secured _inside_ a surprise. _It just keeps getting better_.

The ground rose to meet her. With a well-timed flick of her fingers, the chute detached from her armor, and she fell the few remaining feet to the ground.

Before her feet touched ground, Shepard knew she had miscalculated the drop. An avalanche of scree gave way under her feet, pulling her legs from under her. She slammed into the dirt. Arms and legs tangled as she tumbled, shoulder over shoulder, down the slopes of a gravel-covered hill. A rock slammed into her ribs. Her elbows and knees jarred as she rolled to a gradual stop, a small cascade of scree following her down and settling above her.

For a moment, it was all Shepard could do to breathe. She lay still as the vertigo gradually began to settle and her heart slowed to a dull, hollow thumping behind her ears. Her paroxene visor fogged with each grateful breath. _No cracks_. _That's something_. The silence that hung around her was punctured only by her labored breathing, and the muffled whistling of the wind as it kicked dust across her vision. Her eyes became heavy, the outside world shifting ever so slightly out of focus. She viciously blinked the haze away.

Gradually she forced herself on to shaky feet with a curse. She shifted her weight between her legs, swung her arms loosely, rolled her head on her neck. _No injuries._ She winced as her neck popped. _Mostly._

Shaking her head in frustration, Shepard turned to the hill she had just rolled down. Sure, the hill was the same patchwork of burnt red and brown as the rest of the planet's surface, but detaching early had been a rookie mistake. She should have noticed the shadows it cast on the surrounding terrain and realized she was coming in on a narrow formation – and the only formations that got that narrow were gravelly.

_No point in complaining now,_ she thought with a grimace. Her best view of the surrounding terrain would be from the crest, and she need to bury her parachute in case any unfriendly visitors — however unlikely — stumbled across her landing spot. Drawing a deep breath, she started back up the hill.

Despite the irritation of scrambling up the hill's covering of loose scree, the climb up was much more pleasant than the trip down. Shepard's parachute was waiting for her at the summit, billowing slightly in the constant, low-grade wind that she now suspected was omnipresent on Alingon's surface. After taking a few minutes to fold and bury it under the gravel, Shepard straightened and scanned the landscape.

Jagged hills rose and fell to the horizon in every direction, all a uniform rust brown. A network of narrow canyons, deep gashes in the planet's crust, wound along a north-south axis to the east of her position. In the distance she could barely make out the dark undulation of the canyon where she had spotted the structure, several kilometers off.

Shepard scanned the horizon again for any sign of the Kodiak. There was no plume of smoke, no indicators of a crash; Tali had managed to haul the others back out of the magnetosphere, and hopefully back into Joker's pickup range.

The sky was an eddying tan color, punctuated by a lone white cloud that drifted in the distance.

Shepard shook her head to clear her vision. The white spot was still there, and growing bigger.

A parachute.

Shepard felt her heart quicken. It was impossible; there was no way anyone could have followed her. Tali was the only one who could keep the Kodiak aloft in a magnetic storm, and Garrus, while graced with an almost religious sense of duty, wasn't so stupid as to jump out of the door of an airborne shuttle after her.

But, she realized with a sinking feeling as she raced down the hill, they _had_ both followed her into certain death. _Twice_.

Shepard bolted after the parachute, barely catching herself at the base of the hill as the chute and its owner coursed toward the edge of a nearby ravine. The chute's course veered unsteadily, visibly struggling against a downdraft as it reached the ravine's edge. Its cargo suddenly detached into the canyon, and the chute billowed and zipped forward along a wind stream.

Shepard reached the crest of a ridge beside the gully, veins coursing with adrenaline, and dropped behind a boulder for cover.

Peering around the corner, Shepard's heart leaped at the sight of a tall figure in blue armor lifting itself off the ground.

_Garrus_.

–

Garrus groaned as he pushed himself upright. He hated jumps.

He lurched slightly and tried to blink the world back into focus. The familiar blue glow of his HUD had gone dark, likely knocked into reboot from the impact.

"Shepard," he said into his comm. "Shepard, do you read?"

Silence. Not even static; the hardware had been completely knocked out in the landing. He grimaced and tried to orient himself manually.

A quick survey revealed that he had landed at the bottom of a shallow ravine about a quarter-mile wide. Sandstone cliffs, above which he could hear the low roar of wind, rose for ten meters on either side. The ravine traveled on for fifty meters in both directions before it curved, presumably following the bend of what was once a river. The cliffs were sheer enough that climbing them in armor, with its high center of gravity, would be a chore.

Worst of all, there was no viable cover within fifty meters. Garrus immediately turned and began heading south along the ravine, ready to break into a run at a moment's notice.

Unsurprisingly, Shepard was nowhere to be seen. Garrus had barely managed to control his descent with the manual parachute, and only missed colliding with the canyon walls by releasing early and hot-dropping the remaining distance. Despite his best efforts, he knew he was still several kilometers from the structure he had seen from the air. It didn't take much of a leap to assume that Shepard wasn't aware that he had followed her, and was probably already on her way toward the same structure.

Suddenly, movement flashed in the corner of his vision. Someone was on the eastern rim.

He picked up his pace and rounded the bend. Beyond lay what looked to be a dry rapid, with huge boulders creating an impassable maze. Whoever was along the ridge didn't necessarily know that he'd been spotted. Garrus resisted the urge to run into the boulder field, and instead walked straight into it at his previous pace.

He kept his head low and wove through the scattering of rocks, finally coming to take cover behind one particularly large stone. He unholstered his rifle, and waited.

Shepard dropped to her stomach on the ridge, pressing herself low and out of Garrus' field of vision. He had no doubted spotted her by now, though she had been far back enough that he couldn't have caught a good glimpse, and he was erring on the side of appropriate caution.

Their comms were down, and her helmet muffled sound. There was no way he could hear her at this distance, let alone with enough clarity to stop his hand from reaching reflexively for his weapon. The amber daylight that washed over Alingon wasn't very bright, and she could guess from his continued forward momentum that Garrus' ID and navigation systems had been knocked out as well. He would be going on her armor to identify her. She suddenly wished she hadn't worn the black set.

Getting closer without alerting him wasn't much of an option, either. The only way down was a scree slope that descended ten or so meters and emptied right at the mouth of the rocks behind which he was crouched. Rushing down a pebble slope in the silence of the ravine would have been like announcing her presence with a fireworks display.

Shepard frowned and slowly stood, praying that all those sniper scope upgrades had been worth the money.

–

A muffled yell, almost lost in the echoing wind, sounded from the top of the ridge. Garrus lifted his eye from the scope and looked up.

A figure stepped into view, pitch black armor stark against the ocher sky. He instantly lowered his eye to the sight, finger gripping the trigger.

And then he recognized it; the shoulder plate with custom N7 detailing that only one person could have been sentimental enough to commission.

"_Garrus._" The voice was still muffled, and heavily distorted by the acoustics of the ravine, but more confident.

He lifted his head and breathed a sigh of relief. He collapsed the scope and, after taking a moment to holster his rifle, stepped out from behind the boulder.

Shepard hesitated for a moment before lowering her arms. After a brief pause, she slid sideways down into the canyon, kicking up a cascade of scree. The sound echoed up and down the ravine, and Garrus was certain that anyone within a half-kilometer would have heard the commotion.

But in his relief, he didn't care. Watching Shepard skid, arms akimbo, with the deceptive ease of a well-trained soldier, he found himself too busy trying to stabilize himself between overwhelming relief and a blessedly rational, if fading, annoyance.

"_Garrus_," she repeated as she stepped quickly toward him. The tone was friendly, but at close range the helmet didn't muffle much, and he also heard inquiry and aggravation in the word. Garrus tried not to grin; it was his favorite combination on Shepard.

"Glad to see you're okay after your little trip," he responded dryly. As badly as he wanted to demand answers, the inquisition could wait until later; they had to find a way off Alingon before the light failed. He looked south down the ravine. "I saw a structure not far off from here during the descent. It's about six kilometers, give or take – we should be able to make it there and out before nightfall if we move quickly."

It took a few moments for him to realize that she had not responded. He turned to face her.

"Shepard?" Still silence. He narrowed his eyes. "Shepard, is everything alright? You didn't hit your head, did you?"

Behind her visor, Shepard's brow was creased with confusion. Garrus' mandibles twitched, somewhat nervously; was his helmet really muffling him that badly?

"Shepard?" he repeated.

Shepard opened her mouth to answer, and a tangle of alien syllables spilled forth.

"_Garrus,_" she said, his name almost lost amidst the meaningless noise.

–

The two stared at each other silently. Shepard saw Garrus' eyes darken. He tapped the side of his helmet and cursed – or at least _sounded_like he was cursing. The low, familiar rumble of his voice rolled on in a steady outpouring of unfamiliar sounds that Shepard could recognize only in context as native Turian.

The Spectre folded her arms tightly as Garrus turned his back to her. She could tell that his fringe was bristling under his tinted helmet, and she didn't blame him. A knot had formed between her eyebrows, and she wanted nothing more than to knead it out.

After a moment, Garrus turned back, composure regained. He began to speak, again in the same unfamiliar tones, but stopped suddenly and looked to her for confirmation. She shook her head, and he sighed bitterly.

Their translators were fried.

_Impossibility number three. _This time, she wasn't smiling.

She wasn't sure how, or why, or even _when_they had shorted – maybe in the landing? - but the details were unimportant. They were only a few kilometers from the structure she had spotted from the air, and, with any luck, from the beacon. If it was half as powerful as Aria had hinted at, they could find a way to use the beacon to signal the Normandy, and guide a landing party to come and retrieve them before nightfall.

How she was going to accomplish any of this, of course, she had no damn idea.

More immediately, the structure would provide shelter from the incessant wind and cold. Despite her armor's electronic failures, its passive insulation and respirator were holding strong. The comfort, she knew, was only paper-thin; outside her shell it was likely pushing eighty below, Celsius, and once the sun went down, all bets were off.

Shepard reflexively glanced toward the empty space that once held her HUD clock, and grimaced. A moment's calculation pinned their landing about a half-hour before the current moment. They'd left themselves a five-hour mission window, which had seemed conservative at the time. None of the mission parameters had accounted for distance hiking.

If they hurried, she concluded, they could make it to the beacon in an hour – leaving three hours to hack the beacon, find a way to signal the Normandy, and pray the Kodiak's mechanical failures had only been temporary.

_Close shave._

Garrus must have noticed the tight frown that formed at the corners of her lips, because he straightened slightly and flexed his talons in succession. It was a small tell, so small that she would have missed it had her eyes not been resting on his hands when she stopped to think, but Shepard took some small reassurance from the fact that he was as anxious as she.

Internalizing a small prayer, Shepard raised a hand. She splayed her fingers, then curled all but the last. She extended her arm in the direction of the structure. _Six clicks to the south._

Garrus nodded almost instantly. He tapped his visor and nodded toward the rim of the ravine. _We'll see better from up there. _

As she scrambled back up the slope, Shepard realized that, even if she'd wanted to, she probably couldn't have responded with anything useful. Her formal signing vocabulary consisted of the half-dozen gestures drilled into her skull during basic training. Secure communication tech had made manual signaling redundant, and even black ops only manually directed their teams in worst-case scenarios. The average Alliance grunt never waved his arms around for anything more than exercise. Shepard had taken up the habit partly out of respect for tradition, and partly because it echoed the brilliant, cryptic signing of the slum merchants back home. Deals were brokered and power traded with swift, almost elegant gestures that could turn fortunes and trample gangs.

Garrus, carried almost effortlessly up the slope by his long limbs, extended a hand to Shepard and hauled her as she fumbled the last meter up the incline. She steadied herself and studied the surroundings.

The wind on the rim was fitful and kicked up sand, making visibility was even poorer than she'd expected. Rust-colored sand swept from the ground into the air, cutting visibility to only three or so kilometers, by Shepard's estimate. Daylight fell like an amber sap over the ground, blurring the horizon into the sky. They weren't going to have to wait for nightfall for it to become too dark to move effectively.

"Let's move," she said – mostly to herself – and began walking briskly toward the horizon. Garrus fell in obediently behind her in a defensive formation. Shepard had to glance back over her shoulder to make sure he was there; her helmet muffled the sound of his footfalls, and the low background whine of the comm systems was unsettlingly absent.

As they hiked onward, the quiet that settled about them was unlike anything Shepard remembered. The faintest sounds of crunching dirt and the hollow roar of a distant wind were the only thing that lifted Alingon above the cold, dead silence of open space.

She shivered and tried not to remember.

Minutes chained on interminable minutes, all in silence. Not a single sign of life stirred on the surface. Shepard's mind settled into a numb haze as Alingon stretched before them, vast and desolate as the sky above.

* * *

_O friend, for the morrow let us not worry;_

_This moment we have now, let us not hurry._

_When our time comes, we shall not tarry_

_With ancients, but our burdens carry._


	5. Foggy Dew, pt 2

_One: a refrain of praise to my beta, Sapidus, and to apologize to the readers who have watched this story collect dust on their story alerts for the last two years. If I ever meet any of you IRL, I will buy you a beer/soda for putting up with my nonsense. (Seriously. I'll have my penname on my badge at cons from now on specifically for this punishment.) I am not a perfectionist so much as permanently unhappy with my work, and it takes me a long time to finally bite the bullet and click "submit."_

_Two: A whole bunch of lyrics in this one, so I'll move in reverse order: closing lyrics are "The Foggy Dew," 19th century Irish; Shepard's song is "Rorogwela," a Baegu lullaby from the Solomon Islands; and ten cookies to anyone who recognizes Garrus' bit in the middle._

_Three: Finished ME3. Not sure how I feel about it yet. Still percolating._

_Four: Updated again because eats my formatting. _

* * *

After a lifetime spent in cities and stations, Garrus took the omnipresent hum of civilization for granted. Nothing could have prepared him for the heavy, dead silence that existed just below its surface. The staggering alienness of it felt like being thrown headlong into a wall.

Garrus wasn't exactly a stranger to quiet – he needed the undisturbed hush of the main battery to order his thoughts, after all. But in the battery, he couldn't hear every dull thud of his heart as it beat a maddening rhythm against the inside of his ears. Life was unwelcome here, and for a brief moment, Garrus felt as if each hill was an eye trained on their shadows as they trudged slowly toward the setting sun.

It didn't take long for him to realize that the downed comm link meant that he could no longer hear the soft rustling of Shepard's breath in his ear. Every pause to check their tail for followers erased her from the reach of his senses. Some small, irrational worry began to gnaw at his chest each time he pivoted, wondering if when he turned back, she would be gone without a trace.

Garrus managed to find some solace in the irony of the situation. Thousands of years of technological marvels, and only in the last few generations had some genius realized that the best ward against battlefield stress was the quiet, almost unnoticeable hiss of another being's respiration.

That Shepard, of all people, had fallen into a brooding silence only made the scene more surreal. Twenty minutes had passed since she'd made a lone sound. On any other landing they would have been negotiating their third ill-conceived bet by now, adrenaline fueling the brash give-and-take that they had elevated to an art form.

Garrus' mandibles fluttered uneasily. Anything from Shepard - even those strange, quavering tones he'd heard earlier– would have been infinitely more welcome than the hollow _crunch-hiss_ of dirt and wind.

At that moment, as if moved by some merciful spirit, Shepard began to talk.

–

Moving across open terrain, barely able to communicate to her only backup, and with nothing between her and Alingon's low-pressure atmosphere but her hardsuit, Shepard could no longer ignore the creeping sense of dread that trailed slowly up her spine. Garrus' presence, invisible but felt, at her flank only barely stilled the disquiet that weighed like lead in the pit of her stomach.

So, she did the only thing she could think of; she began to talk.

"I'm not going to die out here," she said firmly. "Not again, anyway. It's got to be boring the second time around."

She smiled slightly at her own joke and Garrus' resulting silence. She hadn't really expected a response, but she had to admit that a grunt – or anything, really – would have propped up the illusion of conversation. As it was, she was sure she seemed a little loopy, monologuing to no-one in particular.

"You know something? This mission, it's my life in a nutshell. It's insane, improbable, and will probably end up with me pissing off all the wrong people," she said, a smirk forming at the corner of her lips. "Best of all, I'm stranded with the one person who could hold my ass to the fire for an explanation, and he wouldn't understand me even if I did." She kicked a rock aside as she passed it. "At least the universe has a sense of irony."

Garrus' face was inscrutable through the tinted visor as she glanced back at him. She shrugged nonchalantly and turned back to the horizon. "You're going to want to call me an idiot when this is over. Honestly, you'll have to take a number. I can see it now; Tali will chew me out, loudly, and I probably won't understand half of it even _with_ a functioning translator. She'll cut a meter-wide swath through the shuttle bay to be the first to explode at me, but once she gets it out of her system, it'll be like nothing happened. But Miranda? She'll _lecture._"

Shepard sighed, a headache beginning to knot in her brow at the thought. "You know, I save the galaxy, piss off the head of a galactic terrorist network, and sign up for a wild goose chase on behalf of an asari with a god complex so that my crew can keep sending checks home to their families. But no matter what I do, everyone treats me like a goddamn child. 'Go to bed, Shepard.' 'Eat your peas, Shepard.' 'Let the politicians handle it, _Commander_.' And _you,_ Garrus_._" She turned, unable to suppress the resentment in her tone. "What is it now - three years we've known each other? Even taking away my brief bout of 'dead', that's more than a year that I've spent trusting you at my six. And you don't even trust me to _sleep_?"

Garrus' shoulders tensed beneath his armor. She faced forward, fighting to keep the rush of agitation at bay. It wasn't worth discussing, anyway.

Garrus wasn't sure what Shepard was saying, but he would have had to be deaf to miss the edge in her voice. Worse, he was uneasy about the sharp tone she'd put on his name. He glanced at her back, bewildered, as she faced stubbornly forward.

_Flaring fringe,_he thought, suddenly recalling how she'd looked when he had called her "ma'am" back on the Normandy. So close to turian, it was scary.

The silence – now loaded, and oppressive – returned. Even her anger unsettled him less than the silence. Desperate, Garrus did the only thing he could think of.

"Merry and bold is now the Primarch;  
Court he holds, amid walls tumbled down."

Shepard tried, but failed, to cover a stumble at the sound of his voice. He allowed himself a smug flutter of his mandibles as she quickly glanced over her shoulder.

It wasn't much, but it anything was better than that unwelcome quiet - even if it _was_ a turian battle epic he'd been forced to memorize as a child. Spirits knew it was terrible enough in the original – at least she didn't have to endure the imperialistic drivel of it – but it was _something._

"His siege has battered town and tower.  
Great treasure his knights have placed in hand,  
Platinum and gold and many a fine ship.  
In Parthia there is no rebel now  
But has been slain, or takes the Primarch's oath…"

–

As Garrus paused before continuing his recitation, Shepard was forced to admit that he wildly outclassed her in verbal memory. Granted, she couldn't understand a whit of what was issuing from his mouth, but it was too rhythmic to be casual chatter, and she thought she could hear a rhyme scheme.

Suddenly, it hit her: Garrus Vakarian, ex-C-Sec officer turned vigilante, was reciting _poetry_.

Laughter welled up in her chest before she could stop it, spilling over in a loud snort. Garrus stopped with an audible sniff of disdain.

"Sorry," she said through a spasm of repressed laughter, and attempted to regain her composure. A moment's silence passed before Shepard realized that he couldn't understand the apology. Drawing a deep breath, she closed her eyes, and her lips parted.

"_Sa ziza zecob dela dalou'a,  
__Boralea'e borale mi komi oula._"

The melody was simple, and sweet, and came to her as naturally as breathing. Notes melted into one another as the words, lilting almost until they danced, sprang from her tongue. A lullaby, and a very old one at that, in a dialect so rare that the only translation VIs equipped to handle it were found in university libraries; but to her, it was nothing more than a nonsense song sung by children seeking the comfort of a breeze from the river on warm spring nights. It was apropos of nothing, and somehow all the more perfect.

It was Garrus' turn to break stride. As a general rule, Shepard sang even less than she hummed. That rule became law when she was in front of her team, and she'd never broken character long enough to give anyone a private concert, accidentally or otherwise. Her voice was anything worth bragging about anyway, and she could only carry the most basic tunes.

But given the situation, well… a lot of rules weren't relevant anymore.

She liked to believe that, at 29 – because like _hell_ was she going to let her two years of being KIA push her over 30 – she had gotten over battle nerves. The first sixteen years of her life had passed in something resembling a war zone, and she'd grown up with one eye open for cover at all times. By the time she figured out that there _was_ no documentation to contradict her when she lied to the recruiter about being 18, gunfire was as natural to the soundscape of her life as the ambient hum of electricity. The morning she left for basic, her few possessions chucked hastily into a backpack, an explosion – probably a drug lab, knowing the neighborhood – had leveled a low-rise tenement two blocks from her own. She had only spared a passing glance at the column of smoke before she left, briefly acknowledging the nuns who stood in the door of the church, shaking their heads silently at the distant ruin.

They had been hiking for just over an hour when Shepard saw the ground drop off some meters before them. She held up a closed fist, and Garrus stopped. She crouched and dashed to cover behind a rock fin at the ravine's edge.

They were at the northern rim of the mesa. In front of them, Alingon's canyon network abruptly stopped their advance northward with a chasm some eight hundred meters across. Shadows melted down the dramatic slopes of the canyon walls before them, finally pooling in a broad, flat wash five hundred meters wide. North along the wash, less than a kilometer away, stood a large conical structure.

It was less impressive from the ground, though Shepard wasn't too surprised, since her impressions during the jump had been fed by an adrenaline rush and Alingon's dizzyingly complicated topography. For starters, there were two structures instead of one, both circular and topped with conical roofs. The smaller of the two was closer and only three, or possibly four, stories, tall; the larger was twice again the small one's height and diameter both. Both were capped with arrays of antennae that bristled toward the sky.

Shepard examined the area. The uneven terrain meant that the shadows uneven and difficult to read, but there was no obvious movement on the canyon floor. She motioned Garrus forward, and he was at her side before she could lower her hand.

With a careful grace, he peered over the fin. A moment of silence, and he shook his head. Shepard watched his fingers fly to his rifle, extending the scope and resting the barrel against a groove in the rock. He raised his eye to the scope, and a barely perceptible shift in angle told Shepard that he was sweeping the canyon floor.

After a moment, he pulled back and turned to Shepard. She looked at him quizzically.

"_A-_" he began, then stopped abruptly with a sigh. He shifted away from the scope, and Shepard scooted over to fill the gap. Garrus held the rifle steady as she peered through the sight.

A dozen figures – LOKIs, by the looks of them, though she was still too distant to tell – were moving near the structure. They were carrying something, though she couldn't tell what.

She sighed. '_Uninhabited' my ass._

Pulling back, she scanned the descent. A series of narrow washes ran down into the trench, each providing varying degrees of cover. They emptied into a small, shallow pit at the edge of the canyon floor, separated from the structure by a hundred meters of flat space and a large fin that sloped in from the southern rim. The washes got them close enough to snipe, but not much else; everything between the pit and the structure was open ground.

She turned her back to the canyon and looked at Garrus. His body language was conspicuously neutral as he collapsed his rifle and turned to face her, awaiting a response.

She swore under her breath, and, hands flying, began to lay out a plan.

–

A shot rang out across the canyon floor. Steel spewed forth from a LOKI skull chassis, and the abandoned torso crumpled to the ground. Its companions turned toward the source of the shot, and Garrus ducked behind the fin as their optics flashed over the southern rim.

He would give Shepard this; her hands could _move_. He had seen military signals before, but Shepard gestured in turns that he could only describe as borderline poetic. He hadn't caught all of what she was trying to convey, but had come away with enough to justify a confident nod. Considering they didn't even have the same hand structure, that was an achievement in and of itself.

A second crack sounded, this time from the right. Shepard's helmet glinted from the eastern washes. They turned toward her, assessing the new threat. They had been flanked.

Garrus leveled his rifle and paused. Below, a good half of the twenty or so units were still moving in inscrutable formation around the front of the structure, unperturbed by the brewing firefight. The unpleasantness of another unwanted surprise caused his mandibles to tighten against his face.

A red flash ripped him from his momentary pause as the first LOKI leveled and fired at Shepard's position. His blood rushed, and he pulled off a second round, then a third. A half-dozen mechs turned toward him and returned fire. He had the high ground, and dropped two with two shots.

Six drones broke away from the group firing at him and moved toward Shepard's position. They began to advance, laying down heavy cover fire as they went. He swept his rifle to the east and settled the cross-hairs on Shepard just as she emerged from behind the fin, M-98 Widow in hand. Another rifle shot rang out from her position.

A flash of red burst into his crosshairs. Shepard reeled. Time slowed.

Rock exploded only a few centimeters from his head, and he cursed as he ducked behind the fin. No digital support meant no shields. How stupid he had been not to realize this at first, he had no idea. Shepard's armor would hold up for a while, but not long enough under concentrated ion fire.

Garrus ducked his head lower as another cluster of rock blew free from the fin, followed by another. They'd spotted him.

–

Shepard cursed as she glanced at her shoulder. The shot hadn't penetrated her plating, but the impact hurt like a bitch. The numbing bath of medigel that would normally have followed was absent. To add insult to injury, any breach would depressurize the suit quicker than she could blink. _Shit._

The LOKI cluster was advancing in lock-step, sending a storm of red shots over her head. If she stood, she was completely exposed; if she stayed where she was, she was trapped.

She shimmied down the fin, keeping low and out of sight. Near the end, she spotted a small dip in the rock, and, taking advantage of the few seconds before the advancing drones could adjust their targeting, rested her rifle in the crook.

_Red boxes._

A cluster of drones lay headless on the ground near the foot of the ridge, and beyond them, a handful continued to move near the entrance in a methodical and unbroken path. One paused and began to amble toward her, a large red crate in its arms, and Shepard shifted the sight down to the package in its arms.

A clear, yellow hazard sign stood brightly against the surface. Explosives.

A blast of heat shot past her ear. The advancing party had found her. _No time to psychoanalyze a mech._She leveled the rifle, held her breath, and fired.

The explosion was substantial. The drones advancing on her, which were now within twenty feet of her previous hiding spot, paused to assess the situation. Shepard moved.

She dropped the Widow and swung her Tempest into her hands as she rushed forward. Bursts of fire spit from the barrel. Two mechs fell; in the back, one's head exploded from a sniper bullet. A fourth raised its weapon, and Shepard slammed her elbow into its optic core. The fifth collapsed under a hail of bullets from her SMG.

She whipped her head toward the structure. Mechs, still carrying their explosive boxes, crumpled in time with the steady, repeating crack of rifle fire from the ridge. _Garrus._

A sudden clench of panic hit her in the chest. She barely breathed as she watched two, three LOKIs drop almost serenely to the ground. Nothing so much as a spark emerged from the boxes and they plunked soundlessly onto the soft dirt at the bottom of the canyon.

A shallow sigh of relief escaped her lips.

Something clutched at her ankle. Shepard looked down to see the upper half of a mechanical torso clinging to her leg, and hear the grating, unwelcome whirring of a self-destruct sequence.

The last thing it saw was the butt of her Tempest.

–

Shepard slipped back behind the fins, retrieved her Widow, and paused to look over their handiwork. A few LOKI continued to carry their cargo, unmoved even as their companions' heads burst forth in showers of sparks. The drones crumpled to the steady rhythm of fire-reload-target that sounded from the southern ridge, and Shepard sank to the ground for a moment of rest.

Fatigue rose to meet her as she settled, weighing down her limbs and tickling a deep sigh from her chest. After a futile struggle against the weight of her own body, she leaned her head back against the rock. Her helmet muffled the continuing beat-pause-pause-beat of Garrus' fire until it thudded lowly, with a sound like a heartbeat. Her eyelids sagged, and she cursed under her breath.

A small cascade of gravel jarred her from her daze, announcing Garrus' descent along the wash. She pushed herself up as he began down the slope, and as he neared, Shepard was relieved to notice no new scars on his armor.

His head was slightly askance as he jogged toward her. A question – or at least Shepard thought it was – rumbled from inside his helmet. He rested a hand on her arm, just below the scorch mark left from the one stray shot, and turned her slightly toward him for a better view. A hot knot of pain flared across her shoulder, and Shepard gritted her teeth. _Leave it to me to get shot in the same place twice_, she thought bitterly.

She jerked her arm back – though not without a wince. "I'm fine," she said pointlessly, and brushed past Garrus toward the structure. He paused a beat before following, at a distance.

As they approached the looming, conical form, the wheels in Shepard's mind began to turn. They now knew that the explosives were stable enough to withstand a sudden one-meter drop. They weren't military-grade, either; the one she had set off reacted more like a roman candle than an anti-personnel charge. It was more likely that they were small charges used in minor construction work. But the only way they could get any kind of punch out of something that small was…

Shepard's eyes widened, and she froze. "Garrus!"

Garrus, who had moved a step past her, turned at the sound of his name. Shepard's eyes were already scanning the ground when they fixed on the spot beside a fallen combat LOKI. A moment of silence passed before Garrus followed her eyes downward.

"Jesus," she muttered, and stepped back.

Beside the wrecked drone was a broad, shallow groove where its carapace had skidded across the soft dirt. From underneath a thin layer of dust and pebbles shone a bright yellow hazard label.

"They're buried," she said. She looked up at the field in front of them. "It's a minefield. But if they weren't expecting visitors, then…"

Garrus glanced at her uneasily. She returned the look, suddenly grateful that she didn't have to translate.

She frowned. "They were going to blow this whole place sky-high."

–

Garrus had to admit, looking across the approach to the structure with renewed apprehension, that whoever owned this place was serious about covering their tracks. The boxes were clustered closely enough that a chain reaction could have easily taken out the building at the foundations. Beside the pressure lock doors stood two enormous towers of explosives, likely designed to blow the doors inward and contain the spread of debris.

Now, he realized with a sinking feeling, they were faced with two options: spend what could be hours clearing out the charges, while running the risk of an accidental detonation that would announce their presence to anyone within several kilometers; or leave it, and enter a building rigged to demolish at a lone stray shot.

Shepard crouched by the side of the downed LOKI. Before he could object – however pointlessly – she began to scoop handfuls of soft dirt from the sides of the buried crate. Garrus barely resisted the urge to step back as the box emerged with a jerk of her arms, dirt spilling from its top.

Without a word, Shepard turned and carried the box back toward the northern rim of the canyon. Garrus watched her carefully as she returned and began to sweep the dirt with her foot as she moved. After a few moments, a half-dozen hazard signs had emerged from under a ten-foot circle of dirt.

Rather than moving to the closest one, Shepard passed it, pausing at the box after it and crouching to dig. Shepard's logic suddenly dawned on him; they only had to remove enough boxes to prevent the explosion from chaining. It wasn't much of a concession, but it was better than nothing.

–

Even with the two of them working, Shepard was surprised that the effort went as quickly as it did. It took just under an hour to clear a patchwork of crates that would keep an explosion from reaching the doors. The booms would be big, yes, but they wouldn't send the edifice crashing down around them.

When the last box was nestled securely against the northern slope, she headed toward the door. The fact that no one had dropped in on their little digging party meant they were likely alone, but she wasn't willing to bet her life on it.

Garrus took up a position beside the entrance. As Shepard raised a hand to the sealed doors, the lock interface suddenly flashed to life. She glanced quickly at Garrus, whose only response was to release the safety on his rifle.

Shepard pressed her hand against the door, triggering the release sequence. The interface whirred obediently, and with a click and shudder, the doors swung open. Inside was a small pressure lock, dim and completely bare.

Shepard nodded toward the far end of the room. Garrus followed her in, and the doors hissed shut behind them. The dull roar of oxygen jets broke the silence, and she sighed gratefully. After a few moments, the computer blinked from red to green, signaling that the room had been repressurized. Shepard shook her head, and Garrus nodded; better to leave their seals intact out of an abundance of caution than to end up depressurized, or worse.

They took up positions on either side of the door, and with a quick nod, Shepard reached out and punched the lock. The doors slid open.

Nothing moved. Shepard and Garrus slipped around the corner, guns at the ready. Barely two heartbeats passed before Shepard lowered her gun and slowly stepped forward, sucking in a breath as she raised her eyes to the enormous domed ceiling that arced a hundred meters over their head.

"_Jesus_," she swore.

* * *

_As down the glen one Eastern morn  
__To a city fair rode I,  
__There armed line of marching men  
__In squadrons passed me by.  
__No pipe did hum, no battle drum  
__Did sound its loud tattoo,  
__But the Angelus bells o'er the Liffey swells  
__Rang out in the foggy dew._


End file.
